Someday when I'm dead I hope to see,
the people that made the people,
that made the people
that made
me.

this city makes me want to write poems
on little paper napkins,
damp with rings of condensation in cafes
like I imagine all my favorite writers did
                                 Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Bukowski
                                      all scrawling their thoughts on little paper napkins,
                                      cigarette in hand,
                                     coffee (no doubt Irish) before them...

i don't want to meet you in a coffee shop several years from now, when i've undoubtedly put on weight and still lost half my hair to the e.d. when i starve for a week or bend over the toilet because i finally cracked i'm not thinking of  several years from now. i'm thinking about a year from now. i'm thinking about three months. two. one. next week, tomorrow, yesterday. i'm thinking about hopping on a plane, or a bus, or just ******* walking until i reach you. until i can show you, show you what you've done to me and show you the brilliance of it all. no, the insanity of it all. the way my skin stretches over my thighs like tiger stripes and the little ridges on my fingernails from not getting enough calcium. all for you. i want to show you what i've done for you, no, what you did to me -- is there a difference? i doubt it makes a difference when you've become the ******* voice in my head.

i just want to be beautiful enough for you. right now.

when all your sorries blur together
they almost sound
sincere

i tried to write an open letter to your new girlfriend. i sat for hours, writing draft after draft, typing over backspace after backspace, all in vain. i realized at the end of it, i had no words for her. i had no wistful compliments, or tips dipped in nostalgia, or even warnings -- i realized none of those are mine to give. i remembered that there have been at least a dozen girls between me and her; you are no longer mine to giveaway. i am no longer the ex. i was never really the ex, but i am no longer the anything. i'm a girl you used to know. years ago. a girl you'll come across in the yearbook, decades from now, and blink -- was that really her name? you'll swear to yourself that it was more beautiful, back when you moaned it in my ear. you'll show me to your kids, or even your wife, laughing and saying there's my high school . . . you'll pause and stick-in the word 'girlfriend' because it's the closest thing that fits, but we both know better. i was never your girlfriend, i was just your ******* girl.

there is no fondness to this story. there is nothing for you to tell your kids, unless you're ready to ******* jade them; there's the girl who starved for me in year nine, there's the girl who didn't say she loved me until it was over, there's the girl who couldn't function with or without me.

there's your girl. one of your girls. a notch in your belt. now that i think about it, maybe you'll just flip past me in the yearbook. and maybe, if we ever see each other again, all you'll do is blink.

i could write so many ******* poems
about your stupid,
******* face.