The Tower of Babel

You took the best years out from under me,
from in here,
in my stomach,
and from what winded up through my chest and around my heart,

You wiped me from your memory,
just as you had always taught me to do of pain,
to treat it as the nuisance it was

You told me I was quixotic,
that I had unrealistic expectations of people,
and I told you that was to be expected of a human

You were wise beyond your years,
but beyond recognition as well,
beyond retribution,
so far beyond, that I was diseased from your dust cloud

You were not ashamed to make us casualties of your war,
a war you had waged many years alone,
hoping against all hope, that we would join you in your hopelessness,
in your recklessness,
in your plague

You took my days,
my months,
my years,

You took my vigor,
my disbelief in disbelief,
my immunity

You were supposed to be so many things,
my elixir,
my lover,
my conductor

Alas,
you were nothing more than all of this,
than the rotting words at the bottom of this pedestal