Playing Hard to Get

Three and a quarter relationships down

And yet I repeat mistakes.

Mistakes or just personality traits?

Old habits dies hard

Old longings linger longer

Sometimes they turn bitter

Rancid

Acidic

Most times they only grow more stronger

I hover haplessly on the borders

Gauging my strength-o-meter

Receding

In alarming redness.

You advice soundly

But my rational is broken

and already hanging by the threads

"Play hard to get"

is the hardest game to play

when your heart plays tricks

and a hardened heart stares

back with a glassy gaze;

perhaps

not even registering

its own undoings.

Yet its undoings it is not.

Because I know

deep down

The paths are strangely familiar

They have been traversed

and travailed over.

Mistakes repeated

or just an inability to break out?

Or is it just my old sane self

playing hard to get

with me?