The ink bled into my paper napkin and somehow I found myself wishing it was your fingerprints – that center parting of your spiral indentation which is yours and only yours, would have been mine, soaked through in blue ink. Now your effete hands, your lidless eyes, your fabricated fibs of decency swirling around me and I wish I weren’t so startled by poetry. There’s sudden vibrating movements when my skin ripples into gooseflesh while your lips blur into the light and the world around you jumps, shocked, erythematic trembling. Direct stare, combined force, me standing, gripping the edge of the coffee table until my knuckles burn white and my eyes scream for closure but it’s your voice, your presence, your siren song and I’m caught; admitting I know nothing of love.

I am the fool, he’s right, you’re right. I know nothing, my fable-tale existence, my wish for completeness found in flesh and a singled last name where marriage was so much more to me – ‘darling’ was so much more to me, and it’s all been trampled on. My sincerest expulsion of self, gone, as if I never existed. My breaking life, my everything, my everything for you – my money, my sanity, my health, my love, my life, walked over and he’s pointing it out to me telling me I’m the fool for believing, for staying after every moment I turned to move away.

Always, I’m crying; tears listless, thicker than summer weeds growing over my face, over my chest, down my neck. A wordless waterfall and it’s torture to hear how accurate this man above me is. He smiles, sinister and steel, graying flesh and he can’t be real. I find myself dreaming of his face, large, pale, over-powering inches before mine and I’m afraid to hear what he’ll say next – what he’ll pull from my depths to drown me in.
He bleeds me dry, always, even in sleep.


And I’m sucked into this, an impulsive longing to know who I am burns until reason is melted and I’m standing on his doorstep once again, waiting to be called in.

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