The abstinence is not the injury:

Ceding the rarest, the exotic fruits,

choicest leftovers to family suits

me no less than them. It’s Robyn’s theory

that I spin my own martyrdom to gain

high ground that irks. Her muddying attempt

presumes the same high ground which would exempt

her from the view of me she entertains.

In truth, while I harbored no intention

of marshalling my noble deed and word,

I’d not have bridled at the contention

without having firstly been deep interred

in the very ersatz moral terrain

I’d been accused of trying to attain.

I have abandoned inessential friends

(despite determination to never

see nor contact them again, and the sense,

oddly, that I’d not been the betrayer,

I do miss them), and by essential friends 

been abandoned (impossibility

notwithstanding, I’m not strictly against

reconciling [or cheap humility].

“Friends” only in name; if not honestly

then historically, in muddled dreams

and stories that can’t mask notes of mothball).

Now friendless I am touched and modestly 

impressed that any former friends had deemed

me worthy of relationship at all.