Tongue-tired

The words are thick and salty on the tongue,
they sit like bleach on the back of the throat -
I try to inch them out, like I have before
draped in pleasantries, desperate for a pleasant reaction I am unlikely to receive.
"She bothers me." Stuttered, spluttered as if the utterance I am not entitled to
as if I haven't separated my body from the earth I knew and uprooted for a new bed that seems less suitable for my survival.
I endure,
I endure the morning of silence without kisses or goodbyes, the early evening of stubborn quick-responses and two-hour tiptoeing, the ungrateful air to looking after the general running of life. I grow
wilted,
prepared to be propped up by canes and wire.
I grow weary,
that whenever I am there
he is certain not to share his time with his friends and myself
and yet
when I forget, or have activities that do not involve him
he quickly chooses her company
as if discarding my disdain and ill-feeling
as nothing but wasted dirt.
I grow weary,
of tearing my hair out
with the where and when and how of our lives without much relief or reward
whilst he savours the sun and the stations of his peers lavishly.
Six months since last mention and a promise of not seeing them
and yet
he can't help himself
I could make the excuse
he's a man
but is that fair
when so many men can show restraint
without complaint
and acknowledge the suffering of their partners,
without dashing it as an annoyance to themselves?
I am weary,
I will admit,
of the lack of declaration of his affection and my feeling of being desolate and, frequently, unsure,
waiting,
wasting,
planning and replanning every element against a rock of reasons and counters.
The storm has been heavy
and I have been tired.
He is a good man, when his emotions are fixed to the floor
and the floor has in-store for him only positive contributions
and I love, upon love, him, despite my faults and his.
I wish he could factor me
higher than her.
I question
how easily he can tell me no
and yet can't tell her to spare my feelings.
I suppose he knows I will stay, he knows I adore him.
My feelings seem less important and
I make them seem less important than his own.
I enable it perhaps
and the straps that bind me to this resentment grow strong
and long stretches the feeling one day I may enforce myself
and despite my best sense, and future romantic health -
ask him to tell me,
would he rather her happiness or mine?