you cannot love people who do not ask for love

 a poem from....someone i don't know IRL? but admire very much
 

What My Ex-Boyfriend Will Tell His New Girlfriend When She Asks About Me
(with apologies to a., who knows to never trust poetry)
That we met in exigent circumstances.
That he had a thing for girls built like me, and so —
That to him I was always like a cartoon character, something half real.
That he was in love with someone else at the time, and I mocked him for it,
and that’s why he was drawn to me.
That the girl he was in love with broke up with the man she was dating —
a no good philosopher with a hard on for Marquis de Sade
and a tendency towards obnoxious prose —
so he had to break up with me, and he thought I’d understand, and he thinks I did.
That once he texted me while I was driving back from a road trip,
and I almost drove into a pick-up truck, and I picked up
a candy bar for him from a gas station, and it was all the more romantic for it.
That the first thing I ever said to him was this is why you can’t trust poetry,
and it is still the truest thing I’ve ever said.
That he thought I had body issues, commitment issues, religion issues,
daddy issues, sexuality issues, trust issues, him issues, me issues.
That we never had a real conversation.
That it turns out he didn’t understand what he wanted from me, and
I didn’t want anything from him.
That you cannot love people who do not ask for love, and
I never asked him for anything.
That you cannot love people who ask for love, and
he never asked me for anything.