I feel like Cruella DeVille,
Smoking a capri
In brand new clothes
Because Christmas
Just happened
Why did, when I opened
All of the gifts from
Family & friends,
Did I long for a person
To step out of a box
And wrap their arms
Around me?
To take them back
To my apartment
So we could sit on
The mattress on the floor
Smoking my little
DeVille cigarettes
And drinking a,
Previously unopened,
Bottle of bourbon
In my now,
Newly gifted
Star Wars mugs

I guess I shouldn't feel this way, I shouldn't feel bad.
Crying wasted tears over something that never was and never will be.
We didn't matter, we were never supposed to matter.
You didn't care and I certainly wasn't supposed to.

We were having fun, or at least that's what you called it.
You were coming from other beds back to mine,
or going from my bed to others.
But, for me it was my very own practice in masochism.

The other girls didn't hurt me the most.
It was the times where you would forget you didn't love me.
We would be laughing, playing, kissing, joking,
And for a split second, a brief moment in time, we were happy.

Then, this wave of realization would come over your face,
Completely washed clean and devoid of all elation that came before it.
And you would remember;
Remember that you didn't want me, that you didn't need me.

Those were the times where I stitched yet another scar into my skin.
It wasn't your fault though, you told me you didn't want us.
Sure, I was led on by enough half-truths and vague semi-promises,
But I was the one to fill in the rest with what I wanted to hear.

I knew the time we spent together- even the times when I was naked,
in your arms, resting my head on your chest,
were little more than tiny wisps of smoke,
that I was trying to hold on to forever.

I guess what I'm saying is I'm trying to put one foot in front of the other;
I'm trying to fight my instinctive desire to be hurt and walk away.
I've allowed this game to be played for far longer than I should have,
but I can never seem to stay away from you long enough.

You have this power over me; this power that I have given to you.
So I am asking, pleading.
If you cant love me all the way, all the time,
Then please let me go all at once and for good.

I used to do things, you know,
with my time.
I used to read;
books, sometimes magazines.

I used to garden.
(Can you imagine?)
I planted tomatoes
and an aloe plant, some flowers.

I used to write, on occasion
mostly short stories
and some essays
here and there.

I liked to cook
and not just scrambled eggs,
(though you always liked my scrambled eggs)
but whole meals
and bake too.

I used to do things, you know
before you.

Your shirt was missing a button
and I couldn't help but notice
but you told me I was pretentious
so I pretended not to see it
but all day long it bothered
me and I couldn't help but stare
at the way the fabric bunched
and nobody seemed to care

Let me simplify
what you can't justify
by saying
it's futile
and unimportant.
You're lackluster
and distorted.
This time is vacuous
And holds no meaning
So watch it play out
And quit your dreaming.

I’m the type to holster mental index cards of things to say on a first date
But no matter how much I study, my words never withstand the test of time.
Eventually, sweet nothings cause ear canal cavities from sultry words too often indulged.

Love made me want to rip my pulsing heart out of my chest and place him on a table just for interrogation.
I would ask, why he would trust so easy when he should know better than anyone that no love, melody, or beat goes on forever.

But what an exceptional construction worker you’ve become.  
Demolishing hearts as if the blueprint to my soul has become obsolete.
Words spewed from your mouth with the power of a wrecking ball that collided with my 5’7 frame.
So unpredictable that I doubled over from the pain.
I crumbled as if I was an ancient building way pass my prime.
And I’m still searching through the rubble to find any salvageable pieces.
Maybe I can recover a missing part of my smile and plaster it back into place, though it will never fit quite the same.
You ****** slowly on my bone marrow and your lack of concern made me insane.

Before I slept, I sprinkled immaculate images of you on my eyelids as if I was the Sandman.
Thoughts of you embraced my dreams, and it was the only way I could find serenity in my slumber.

I will never again activate the synapses in my brain that saw you as a god that descended to earth.
You ripped my psyche to shreds like a cannibalistic cupid who lost sight of the agenda.
To create love, not to pierce it with vindictive arrows.  

Now all you are to me is this poem.
A poem.
Letters, words, and stanzas.
You don’t even deserve the time it took me to write this.
You do not deserve the effort of my joints smacking the keys when I find the next thought of how you hurt me.

Like sacred paintings in newly discovered caves, I tattooed the inner walls of my cerebral cortex with memories of you.
It would be there forever. Waiting to be discovered by the next person that walks into my life with a torch filled with hope.
Illuminating my dark, damp and lonely cave.

When the next woman crosses my path and wonders why I get a verbal tic from the word love, I will unlock those same chambers of my mind and show her the walls that you’ve left your worthless signature on.

I hope she will be able to understand that I can let her onto the front porch, but it will be some time before she gets to see my home.
Because, it’s really messy in there.
***** dishes in the sink, books thrown on the ground, an unkempt bed, and my confidence and self-worth hung up to dry on the clothesline.

You cannot just rent a space in someone’s home and then leave without a month’s notice.

You were my addiction,
I injected your ******* essence and I was high on life when you were near.
So close that you coursed through my veins and made me feel alive.
Every now and again I get that familiar itching of an addict.
I am itching, just to text you.
Just a simple hello.
I get urges to find you.
To cop another one of your addictive glances straight into my two liquid pools of inexperience.
I never thought addictions were this hard to kick.

If time is a convincing illusion, then as I am writing this,
you are reading it; you are remembering me years after
we have spoken last, and I am noticing you for the first time.

I'm a young woman waking up in an apartment in Albany,
New York, realizing that I am finally broken enough to fix,
and an East Boston moppet in ***** pink overalls, riding
Big Wheels through the sprinklers with a boy named John Henry.

You're delivering newspapers on a cold New Hampshire morning.
I am falling asleep wondering if you could possibly love me.
You are saying that you do. You are stardust, and I am long gone.

Hate me
Without cautious despite.
Hate me with
Ferocious luster, without
A gleam of hope of you
Ever finding my smile
Endearing again. Hate me
So good, so bad, that my eyes
Are forests with dense trees
That you get lost in and always
Want to leave. Hate me without
Guilty despair, hate me without
A burden in your heart, instead
Of hating me without you.

somewhere in my dreams
last night I swam in a lake
that glittered as a hundred
thistle prisms, I ran through
schools of fish, hallways that
whistled, stairwells that were
no feat at all, everyone was
somehow impressed by me
I held faces between palms
and kissed so many people.

And my blood stirred redgold, and the pit of my stomach shrunk into a seed of derision.
My neurons released from their chamber, an epileptic soul as consequence.
Pores opened like rabid mouths foaming and spitting liquid,
I stand in a sea, and shake my fright.
I dance my worries into a hurricane of lost words,
And transpose rhythm and insecurity by the deadly trampling
Of pillows.