You begin to wear the same shirt almost daily. You sit very still.
You feel most at peace when no one is watching, you feel most at peace when you imagine he might be thinking of you like you think of him.
You let him convince himself and you and the world that the pain he caused you isn’t real. You spend days and months questioning the reality of those four weeks in London. The world agrees.
You convince yourself that nothing really mattered, and no one could truly care.
You start to resemble a crumpled gift bag in the corner of the room. You were once something to somebody.
You tell yourself you should have known better. After all your mother always told you about over watering plants as a child because you never knew how to stop giving.

On Saturday night I open my legs for a man I don’t love
On Sunday morning I cry for you in the kitchen with my friends over coffee
Every gentle part of me wants to give up
But it took a miracle to make me, and I go on being made
Love is in everything around me - look for the clues and wild women well, they don’t get the blues.

Your mother cries without tears. Your mother has sad eyes. Your mother has never had anything she ever wanted except you.
And you tell her to give in to the demons that possess her, and that god has never blessed her in this life.
You think, I’ll be greater and smarter, more grown up and a better daughter to make it worth it for her.

You told me I looked like your prayers, so I asked if you had ever begged God to die.
Time is honest, and every morning looks more and more like forgiveness.  
But every October you cross my mind, and I force myself to swallow your memory because I never told you how I always knew you’d break my heart. Every October, I close my eyes and imagine a life spent loving what is already good.

I am done talking about my sadness like it’s some holy thing.
My skin is all honey before noon. I wake to celebrate the anniversary of a lover I never kissed. Of a body I never once adored. Then kneel back into a dream where I am good and loved. I am good. I am loved.

Good would have to exist in this world if I were to win. Some days I am an island wishing I would sink for my sins.
Every love has its landscape. Every landscape it's baron winter.
We sat by the river talking of saints and sinners, of wonders and mountains and you never touched my hand, did you?
But I -
Cannot please
Cannot charm
Or win
And the Thames is thick
The warm weather is holding
And all I ever wanted was to be good
Maybe if I run fast enough I can get back the time I lost

I sleep with my hair warm and wild like a sonnet.
When I wake, I am new again.
All the religions you know could not teach me this.
All the gods I don’t know are begging me to meet them.