Estimation

I smile sweetly
and
    don't know why,
feign agreement, casualty of
frame and form,
lay down- and you...
I struggle to know myself, so surely
                   know not you.
But I try.  I've tried.  Why must I keep trying?

      If love is a game, my strategy backfired, so I review, recall my
                           moves
to see where I've miscalculated and find it's been all along.
                    I've over and under estimated us both, danced vapid, showed weakness at every turn.

                                            Did I know what I was doing?

                                                           Was I drawing out, deliberately, exposing not your vulnerabilities but   mine,
allotting power in some grand scheme, my ego trumping reason so that when you beat me to the
            punch, I never knew what hit me?
                                         Was I unclear about who I was,
                                           where I belonged, to whom?
                                            Was I tiptoeing all over lines of caution, playing with that proverbial fire,  thinking I would not be
                               burned?
Or am I so unfinished in mind, I could not recognize your own growth implosion?  Did I wrongly imagine that
                                                                               your hands could fix me, get me right?
                                                                                            Did I lie, too?
                                                                                                          Truth is, now, I don't suspect I discerned your colors,
blurred my own
 and hoped for genius.

Do you lie now or did you then? Or rather
did you tip me off?

   I fear this all but most:
             the theory
             that at
my core,
I allure the worst.
        That I give to get, not love
 but condescension , that I might agree, take stock, confirm the liar that's lied  to me from start.

Congratulations.  Your triumph, my design.  Your mental reservations seem
               a sham
                and this colorable romance, artful.
Your absence of excitability swells ironic
                               in timing and in plot.
                                     My mildness
                                                   equals your composure.
                                                             Your performance lacked grandeur.  You alluded nothing but my skill is
such that I can translate even that.
Before your wonderful came something lovely but of that you wouldn't know.  Therein, your big mistake- ignorance or arrogant assumption that there's
   no back story.
                 There's always back story.

                           So now,
                                    what keepsake should I take? That last bold denial of assertion? That I might learn that dissapointment's one thing, disrespect another?  That preparing as I did for one, vain expectations blinding, ignoring counter evidence, I unprized myself?

But manifesting now, I'll expose us both, draw man from woman self.