A Sonnet from the Archive of Love’s Failures, Volumes 1-3.5 Million

If you were once inside my circle of love

and from this circle are now excluded,
and all my love’s citizens I love more than you,
if you were once my lover but I’ve stopped
letting you, what is the view from outside

my love’s limit? Does my love’s interior emit
upward and cut into night? Do my charms,
investigations, and illnesses issue to the dark
that circles my circle? Do they bother

your sleep? And if you were once my friend
and are now my villainous foe, what stories
do you tell about how stupid those days
when I cared for you? Because I tell stories

of how you must tremble at my love’s terrible walls,
how the memory of its interior you must always be eroding.