Drips and Drabs of the Pseudo-Writer's Mind
Eleven Ways to Say “I’m Sorry” (Without Really Meaning it.)
1.
“Listen”, you whispered
Into my silence as you spun against the wind
While the cotton of your fragile thoughts
Tumbled into whey
And disappeared.
2.
A man once handed me a coin
And told me:
“Flip this upside down,
And whichever way it sticks into the mud,
That is your fortune.”
3.
I am not the girl you think I am.
4.
Shallowed breaths,
You rested, hollowed out against the sunlight.
I tore into your flesh with a dulled knife,
ripped your heart out of it’s trembling hole
And pressed my lips against your bleeding pulse.
“This is love,” you assured me,
Thrusting out your absolution with a wave of dying fingers,
And we waited in the blue-orange quiet
As you spilled out over my hands.
5.
Like the rose-water scenting up your pillows
In yesterday’s parade of yellow songs,
I found myself, suddenly, severely lacking.
And also, out of chewing gum.
6.
Underneath my fingertips
You gave away a thousand damning secrets
In the tremble of your paper-thin veins,
And the way you couldn’t look me in the eye.
As if darkframed whispers could
mean anything more to me than
those empty floorboards you sang
through in late August.
7. I am not the girl you think I am.
8.
You trumped around the living room,
Wearing down my eyes with rug burn.
So proud in your cheap, plastic imitation of a happy life,
And still I heard the fanfare spinning from your fingertips
And the loose threads of cotton dangling
From that ratty old blanket draped across your shoulders.
How fair is it that I always saw you just as perfectly as you pretended?
9.
If I could peel back
The layers of teeth-sunk skin
I would let my brain splatter to the ground,
And my dustpan would settle as your offering.
10.
I awoke this morning with rope burns on my neck.
And while it’s true that I never learned to tie a noose
I am quite adept at giving myself just enough hope
To hang with.
11. I am not the girl you think I am.