Just Say It

Sarah at lunch, complaining soft and low,

about her 'boundary issues,' where to go.

And I could hear it, clear and sharp and true,

the therapist's slow words, cutting right through.

'Enabling patterns,' she had said, that day,

'You give them rope, then wonder why they stray.'

I clenched my jaw, the sandwich on my plate,

its crust so dry, a bitter, sudden hate.

Not for Sarah, not for her sad plea,

but for the knowing, burning inside me.

She was right, damn her, so precisely right,

and I'm still spitting anger in the fading light.