whine fest 357

[comfyshoes]

Four years and 357 poems.

A five year friendship and every ounce of self respect

I’ve accumulated as an adult.

This is what it’s cost me to love you,

to keep it alive, then watch in horror as it was exposed.

It was left there to breathe and be toyed with

quite often between years one and three

before you decided it could be closed,

but should remain slightly ajar

which became the part of me that always hoped....

I can’t think of a better analogy than carrying a torch

while I attempt to explain these years of my life

but I wish there were better words, more dynamic imagery

and traumatic associations, something so all encompassing

and spot on that I would never have to write whine fest number 358.

 

Your heart was breaking for someone else

the last night that we made love.

That part of you that once would have given

both arms to be where I was

had become a dormant cell,

a person buried and a dream left to sleep

too long to acknowledge its fruition.

I would do so many things different

or maybe I would go back and not have done it at all,

every day is a wrestling match

and now my heart breaks for you

like routine maintenance that may be rescheduled

but never canceled.

 

This thing I carry has eaten through my hands

but I am saving the ashes like severed parts

that can be reconstructed in case it is ever dropped.

Now, picture a grown woman hobbling with a torch

between her wrists and weary arms,

thinking to herself,

why doesn’t this stop??