Comic Relief
Did you like it when I disappeared?
When I left behind an empty space,
room for you to stretch and grow, for you to live and breathe;
I took myself away and let the best part of me be a dream that you once had,
and the dream was a memory, the black and white kind, with color added:
nearly real, but fake enough to be endearing.
So now you’ll think of me fondly, and think of what
we could have been, rather than what we were.
My memory will wake you in a sweat at night, gasping for breath,
hands outstretched, and for a moment you’ll forget
you never knew the taste or feel of me, you never
had my touch to add to your sordid little collection
of other women you loved and lost.
You said you didn’t love me anyway, so the
losing what you never had is almost a triumph, in this case.
Let’s dwell on the past, it’s all that’s left. When we met you didn’t believe in me,
and I didn’t believe in you. We gave each other lies like presents,
wrapped each other up, and when at last we went into our dance
it was long-distance, fuzzed and vague. Oh, you said you were an honest man,
but that too was a lie, the worst kind of lie, the kind you tell yourself
and wrap like steel around your bones till you’re invincible in your altered truth.
Did I say you were handsome? You have two ears, a nose, two eyes, and a third
hidden somewhere, I can’t see it, I didn’t look.
You have that mouth that told fewer lies than your fingers;
you were a foreigner. “What accent?” you said, and,
“Which language?” It was all a choice.
And when you got down on one knee it was all I could do not to laugh,
I could picture it so clearly, and it was madness, but it wasn’t a delusion,
you were playing the clown prince and I was letting you at first
till the laughing became weeping and the weeping was all there was.
“I think I love you,” I said, and you were content to let me lie to you,
or at least you thought it was a lie, and were content with that,
and in the end it was the truth because I said,
“I think,” and I did, at that point. It’s a funny old world.
Isn’t it funny?
There’s no audience now, and I haven’t seen you for ages. You told me once
about your favorite things, and I walked high wires trying to please you
but it was all an act. So consider this my tender resignation,
abdication of the rightful place of being your Other Woman.
Let’s not say goodbye. You know you won’t forget me.
Those dreams you have, that faceless woman, it’s always me.
I’m haunting you, and when you adjust your shaving mirror,
it’s me you’re scraping off your skin. The joke’s
on you. I always grow back again.