Thursday Night

My stomach, cold, knotted , as I listened to the message that changed everything

Don’t think I’ll ever forget the terror, the rush, your voice in my veins

Limbs numb with pain I couldn’t feel, unmovable, nauseous

I was back in that little bar, watching those fucking blue eyes strangle my conscience,

Back to a pool table, your smile a wonder unlike any I’d ever seen, mirroring my hammering heart

Text messages, Valentines, comforting and beautiful, the things you made me believe for a moment I was

Wrapped in your arms, the best night’s sleep you said you’d ever had, and I bought that, too

Too much, too soon, too hot, too heavy

And her. Forever the confider, the secret-giver, the expecter, the naive and afraid

Unable to return the favor, feigning concern, selfish revelation, destruction

And I. Left holding the reins of her life…and his, what to do?

Back to the traditional expectation of my sex-- silence, brooding, solitary suffering

Hopes that you might stay, that perhaps this is only the beginning, that my error is not fatal

Modern verses on small backlit screens, rewriting you as you rewrite me

Biting my tongue, suppressing the twinge you’ve asked me not to disclose, is it enough?

A new fashion trend, wearing my heart in my chest instead of on my sleeve,

Protected from romanticized sticks and stones, weapons that dismember emotion from experience

Lines of reality and interpretation blurring, I always do that to myself

Always left with incomprehensible sadness, emptiness, loneliness, a song played by someone else

Always someone else, looking for advice, but my own shit isn’t even straight

Is that how psychologists work? This isn’t what I wanted to be, the trying half of the one-sided friendship

Back to sliding into the driver’s seat, your car, not mine

But with your hand on my leg, I can’t focus on the road; there’s nothing but contact charge

Electricity between your skin and mine, please god, don’t let it end, where are your high beams?

Does your microwave work? I brought Chinese, memories flash through my shattered mind

As if we’re dying for your third time, as if we were ever living, converging together as one

But we had, and I couldn’t…still can’t…get enough

Back to the first kiss, your hands on my face, you asked for it, pulled me under

Told me I moved like the 1950s, and now I almost wish I hadn’t believed you

For a cosmic moment, I gifted to you the damaged goods that were me, opened to your scrutinizing gaze

Hoping you wouldn’t destroy them in the fashion of those before you

Learning to love what I had been taught not to trust came easier than I expected

Learning to lose what I had taught myself to love, not so much

Fleetingly, perhaps that was what I breathed as I shared your cigarettes

But somehow, it was all still too much

Somehow, I am still unprepared to surrender, to remove my fingers from your scars

My secrets may not be safe with her, but hers are safe with me, and so are yours

For it is not I who cannot, and should not, be trusted.