the girls I kissed under bursts of fireworks I never won carnival prizes for
the girls I entered the sheets with I never made a deeper connection
the girls who gave me their best I never understood their motives
and I wondered where they all went and why we parted ways like cathedral doors and why they took the hand of other monsters and vanished into the night.
I was too naive to notice all the red flags waving behind me and too dense to turn around and open my eyes.
but now I face this dry vacancy and I see they’re intertwined with their domestics constricted with their marriages taunting their husbands commanding their boyfriends obsessed with their photo albums cramming belief and guidance into their children
its the same unabridged story told over and over and over and over again.
I too, sit with this adverse outcome: this one wants me to quit drinking and that one wants me on a diet and this one wants me to get a better job and that one wants me to exercise more.
I’ve never been one to rest on my laurels, but as I lay down in this bed with this one like so many buried cold beneath the Earth, I can’t stop thinking of those angels from my past that have flown off into other heavens.
I was never deserving of their time nor their presence