Tonight,
in the words of Neruda,
I can write the saddest lines.
Tonight I write the saddest lines,
all for you.
And it will be painful
and tear-stained,
but honest.
I will pour my heart into this page,
for you,
and you will take my innermost thoughts tonight.
But you must know,
darling boy,
that this will be the last words I spill for you,
the last drunken night I allow you into my creative soul.
This will be the end of this,
of us,
of you and me.
Never again will I write for you love stories, or sad words.

I used to think that if given the chance,
or given the time,
I could write a thousand lines on the way
your breath felt against my bare back.
I could write infinite lines on the way
your fingertips electrified my lips,
and still have more to say.
I could write forever on the way I loved you,
Loved you entirely and hopelessly,
how I ached for you.
And I used to see you everywhere,
in the faces I passed
and the lopsided smiles of strangers.
I used to drive past you in every beat up pick up truck
on the streets of Columbus,
behind every backwards hat.
But my darling,
it's been awhile since I've seen you,
and I can't remember what your fingertips felt like anymore.
I used to close my eyes and be able to trace your features,
for they had been etched into the walls of my mind.
And I used to feel this emptiness in my chest,
because I had placed my heart in your hands,
whether you had wanted it or not.
But lately,
I haven't felt very empty,
and I couldn't tell you what your dimples
looked like.
I used to know every speckle and fleck
that lived in your irises.
But now,
I couldn't even tell you the color of your eyes.

At first,
I tried so hard to keep missing you,
thought I was supposed to miss you,
thought I wasn't supposed to let you go.
I used to think that I would love you forever,
that you would live in my heart,
occupy my soul.
I used to be okay with that.
I used to miss you every second that I was breathing.
But now,
well now sweet boy,
I go days without you here,
and some mornings I wake up unable to remember the last time
I actually missed you.
So I try,
try to miss you.
But it's far too hard to miss you by myself
and I'm so tired of missing us enough for the both of us.
So this is the end,
the end of all of this,
the end of everything.
Thank you for allowing me to love you,
for never asking me to be more than I was,
for never being more than you were,
for being ordinarily
Spectacular.

I never called it ****,
the events of the night the gin had made us hazy
and the drugs had us reckless.
The half hour you spent strumming me
like some pawn shop guitar
Suffocating me in the sheets
which were covered in the filth of your former lovers.

I never called it ****.

The way your hands had rudely ripped
my previously untouched skin
and your mouth devoured my innocent lips.
Never thought much of the way you had told me to be quiet
while I whispered for you to stop
because I'd never done this before
and it was painful
and I wept.
Because you had warned that I would wake the others
and I was embarrassed
and you had made me *****.

I never called it ****.

Never let the repetition of your phrases sink in too much
as you told me it was fine
and it was okay
that I'd like it.
I never thought too hard.
Because you moved too fast
and the room was spinning
and I gave in to waiting for it to be over.
And when you had gotten too tired of hearing me whimper
and my pleading had become obnoxious
you sighed an angry "**** this"
and stomped off to the bathroom to finish yourself,
after commanding I put my clothes back on,
And find somewhere else to sleep,
I stumbled across your ***** basement to where the others slept
and collapsed hiding silently in the sinkholes of your couch,
Listening to your grunts before the light came on and you passed out
avoiding the stains of my youth on your sheets.

And I never called it ****.

In the morning you drove me home
making little effort to hide your disgust in my failure to get you off
While I looked out the car window at all the houses I had grown up next to,
None of which looked familiar any more
attempted to ignore the stinging of the poisonous scars you had left behind
pretending that my body wasn't covered
in the scratches and bruises of your insincere actions.
And when we arrived outside my parents' house
after an eternity of painful silence
you didn't speak merely
grunted at my departure
and I snuck quietly through the front door to the shower
where I scrubbed until the marks from your fingernails
became indistinguishable from the skin I had rubbed raw
until it bled
trying to convince myself
that I had eliminated all the remnants of your scent
and the dirt from your actions.

But I never called it ****.

My son will never know the me I was
before I became myself.
He'll never know the girl
who sat on fire escapes at three am,
in some city somewhere,
smoking cigarettes and writing love poems.
He'll never know the tiny apartment
where she discovered
that she could never really be as broke and glamorous as Audrey had been,
because she didn't make enough money,
and there was no handsome stranger that would eventually take care of her
after ninety-five minutes' time.
And instead of throwing fabulous parties,
she preferred sitting on the floor,
drinking cheap wine from the bottle
in front of old movies.

For years I dreamt of a life like that.
Where I was my own and belonged to no one.
Where life was lonely
in a tragic but beautiful sort of way.
That was the woman
I believed
I was destined to be.

And I was lucky
For not many people make it
to who they've always dreamt of being.
Not many people escape the monotony of real life.
I did.
I got out.

And parts of me were glamorous.
The nights I met strangers
and danced on city streets,
drunk and in love with the world,
wearing tight dresses,
heels in hand,
hair blowing in the summers breeze.
She,
was glamorous.
Walking down streets
singing anthems to our youth and independence,
we were glamorous,
me and all those nameless friends.
We were young and unattached.
We roamed the world,
and it belonged solely to us.

But friends,
life gets lonely.
And when the glamour fades,
you are who you are.

I loved those nights.
Every one of the passionate,
exciting,
artistic,
lonely nights.
And if my life had gone a different way,
I would still be that girl,
in that tiny apartment,
twenty years from now,
longing to escape that life as well.

You see,
my life has been wonderful.
And I have been the luckiest girl to walk the earth.
Because I never got stuck.
Some people just get lost,
in all of that never belonging to anyone,
never belonging anywhere nonsense.
But I didn't.
Now, I
belong to my son.

And he will never know who I was before him.
Nor will I tell him.
Because those memories,
and those secrets,
those are mine.
Mine,
to drift off into remembrance from time to time,
smiling secretly
about how I was one of the luckiest women alive
back then.
And luckier still that when I come back,
my son's smile is there to greet me,
and remind me that my life
my life, is exactly where it should be.

My son is an old soul,
filled with old thoughts.
I can feel it in his breath as he sleeps,
and his eyes while he studies the world,
ever so serious,
ever so conserved,
and ever so beautiful in his silent observations
of me and the world he is meeting
for the first time.
And one day
he will be the man who walks city streets,
changing the world,
saving the existence of man.

This,
I know,
because he saved me.
He saved me when I was so "glamorously unaware"
that I needed saving.

So while I have moments
where I mourn who I was -
the starving artist intent on creating tragically beautiful art -
I remind myself
every moment,
that my son,
my son IS art.
And who he is
will forever
be my greatest poem.

I live, in honor of him.