You Owe Me

You owe me more than stinted glimpses of a battered heart.
You owe me for all the times I made you smile. All the times you made my heart beat a minute a mile. All the times I held your hand and guided you back past the edge of self-pity and denigration - even when you'd clearly leaped over the precipice...you owe me, because I never cut loose your bungee cord. 
You owe me more than the feeling of the shadow of a friendship only falling on me when the sunshine of your love has dwindled.
You owe me more than vague explanations and heartfelt lamentations over someone else. 
You owe me for all the times I gave you what you needed and refused you what you wanted. For all the times I heard your pain and gave up what I needed to be your balm.
You owe me more than the warmth of a friendless friend: the empty room into which you lament your woes when the world outside turns its back on you.
You owe me for the trust I placed in you; for your trust I never broke; for the trust that you destroyed.
You owe me more than a pitiful coupon to a friendship that should never have been allowed to wilt the way it did: like a sick rose you walk past every day, and don't ever wonder about whether you should take it to the sunlight...till it's too late, and winters already arrived.
You owe me, because I tried to salvage our sinking ship.
You owe me for the nights I lay awake worrying about you; for the days I walked through thinking about how to help you; for the times I took your life and your woes and placed them before my own.
You owe me for understanding why you broke my heart.

And I owe you. For showing me all that I really could be.
I owe you for painting my world with a kaleidoscope of colours, for luring me into a cranny of time, where even  surreal happiness was possible.
I owe you for the acceptance - for the way you never pitied me.
I owe you for loving me for that short while, for nurturing false promises, for watering dreams that grew.
I owe you for giving me sunshine, for pulling it out from under my feet.
I owe you because in playing your game, you showed me that I am worth my name.
I owe you for the heartache because it taught me to smile through the storms; that even through hail, you can always spy a rainbow.
I owe you because you contributed to who I am.
Even though, "I am not what I am."

But never forget, all that you owe me. If you do...it will prove to me that the person I once knew was never really true. I can bear my debt...but not a lie - every wound heals with the passing of time, mine has already barely a scar, but a lie...is degenerate.

You owe me.
Just like I owe you.