Maybe. It was something tender,
but tender like a bruise.
Every look and
touch
that you threw my way
made me want to give you everything.
For a little while,
my heart beat
in the syllables
of your name; but
the heart is always
the last one
to leave the lost cause.
We define ourselves by the ways in which we orbit around others.
At the time, I hoped that
your fingers fit with mine
like a key in a lock instead of
two bullets in the chamber of a gun.
And the sad thing was that
there were several times when I should not have forgiven you
so easily, should have just walked away. But in those days,
you could have slit my throat and with my last
gasping
breath,
I’d apologize for bleeding on your shirt.
How could I have loved you so much,
I ask myself later,
since it always seemed like
you were expecting not me,
but ⅚ths of a mirror image of yourself.
I guess that’s why
I convinced myself
that you were bettering me,
when all you were doing
was assuming yourself right before anything else;
even when you were laying in bed
with a girl that you no longer
wanted to kiss,
(yet you’d still wear
the heat of her body)
and let her doubt herself
until all her thoughts became
“Maybe this time, maybe next time, maybe, maybe, maybe…”
Back then, I’d take the poison that needs sucking out;
any excuse to get
your lips on me.
So you’d kiss me once, hard,
and call it our bloodletting.
My most profound wish came true and was invalidated in the same breath. (The truth).
But I guess it’s hard to let go, even if what you’re holding
is full of thorns.
Maybe especially then.
For a while, your name was
a bone splinter inside my mouth.
Forgive my perplexity at the time,
as I no longer knew what to think after you told me
that we should stop seeing each other
(not once, but three times);
“For our own good.
“Because a relationship between North Carolina and Savannah is too
far,
and too hard for both of us.”
I believed you when you assured me that we were still friends, still just as
close.
I hadn’t assumed that “just friends” still meant
that you could and would fuck me whenever we saw
each other, still ask for those pictures taken in
a darkened bedroom,
still write me those words that sometimes bordered on frightening when I’d look back, after the moments of fervor.
You’re delicate. But I’m not afraid to break you.
I won’t ask what you want anymore, you understand that?
It won’t be cute and it won’t be sweet.
Write it out. You have to beg.
I’d pull your fingers away if I was there
So I could force my cock inside you.
Later on, it was how you told me that
you still wanted me like I wanted you, if only it weren’t for
the distance,
distance,
distance…
Later on, it was how you used Them
always as your excuse, (as though They were
a helpless soul and your duty to shelter).
(As long as I’m reminding myself of things,
I’m a good person,
worthy of love, of respect-
both from myself and others).
You told me not to mourn
a love
that I hadn’t even known was dead.
You told me to move on
after you had peeled yourself away so slowly,
as though you were wearily plucking my eyelashes,
one
by
one.
You only left me a bewildered jumble of uncertainties.
I suppose that I may have looked like crumbled stone from the outside,
but there’s a cherry-red smolder in my bones, (turn out the lights;
you’ll see).
Back then, one good gust of wind, and
I’d have razed this place to the ground.
- I could already taste the ashes.
By all means, one day I’ll ferment
the heartache you left me
into nostalgia. Time will do with us
what it wants.
One thing you taught me:
Do not look for healing
at the feet of
those who broke you.
Maybe you thought that you’d absolve yourself
of any impact or mistake
when you asked to explain.
(I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so charmingly deluded).
But honey,
the joke’s on your meaningless gesture
because I absolved myself
the moment that I didn’t
commit suicide
on my 18th
birthday.
(I fought to live only because
I’m too stubborn to die quietly).
Bullet in my gut, blood staining my teeth, I lived
with my mind as my own hell
for years; (hell is languidly being abandoned by those I love).
I tore myself apart and spat in death’s face
to survive the last year, and somehow
I walked away with a smile.
It’s that they told me later that they hadn’t wanted to go about it like this at all, that they’d wanted to tell me months ago, but were convinced not to.
It’s that this was what I’d been conflicted about earlier, when you convinced me not to tell them, only to tell them later yourself.
It’s that this scenario is what drove a wedge between them and I in the first place, back in the beginning of the end of the summer.
It’s that the whole experience has become a twisted-up pile of torn apart words.
(It’s that we’d promised never to let a stupid thing like a boy come between us).
I wrote a letter, years ago,
And left my words folded up on their pillow;
"About what you said.
I’m not going to wake up and see you.
I’m already awake.
I already see you.
I’m not going anywhere."
(How uneasy, being fraught with the guilt of breaking your own oaths, even more so when they were just as profound for yourself as you made them).
Memory is fickle but some actions cannot be undone.
For a while,
the thought of you was like spun sugar on my tongue.
And still, part of me feels terribly stupid for
playing that role
of being happy with only
the superficial few layers of love
and never anything deeper.
But I learned from you, and I know better now.
Know better than to change myself
in search of the approval of someone I love;
better than to let someone be
manipulative and condescending
under the guise of “for your own good;”
better than to be with someone who listened to me open up
about my fears and doubts,
never offering anything of their own.
I know that I am iron and sinew, all spitfire and bite. I know myself in the grip of fighting tape around my knuckles and the snap of a bowstring. I know myself in holding tight the people I love and letting them hold me tight in return.
This is how I want to feel;
not used up,
but well-loved.
(Some time ago,
I sat by myself, and finished
reading Saga).
