so you came to get your mail and i was
so casual. i sat at the kitchen table
and typed nonsense words and pretended
they were my articles.
i made a point to not look you in the eye
and i denied your invitation to the noise show.
you did not sit down. you stayed for five minutes, and
backed up when you left so that you were facing me and you said,
"i guess i should go" and when i nodded you looked down and i knew
that you thought i was being cold but i thought,
"if i can just not break this cool, you won't see how badly i'm taking this".
you said, "soon we should talk" and i nodded.
when you left i exploded and threw all of my shoes at the wall.

i am not above being angry at you now.
i have let the passed two weeks be markers of my growth
and now i want to begrudge you a little.
i am glad to be rid of your unwillingness to wear deodorant because you
are so in love with your "musk".
i am pleasantly void of nostalgia for your excessive agreeableness
but the little "eeehhh" noise you make when you don't want to do something.
i'm thrilled i don't have to listen to Bane anymore and that
when i watch a movie there is no one poking me in the shoulder saying,
"oh you really need to watch this part. oh you missed it! we have to rewind it!"
also, it's pretty fucked up how you hate the talking heads.
who hates the talking heads?

in the daytime, i can flit by on my little resentments
and hostilities. i can go out and talk to someone without
interrupting the flow of the conversation without wondering
what you'd be saying instead.
i can see a funny license plate and resist sending it to you in a text.
i can wear my purple dress without thinking of your hands.
i can even get messed up and not start whining to whoever's on my left
about how fucked up this whole thing is and then have to be brought to bed
with a bucket just in case.

but at night?
everything flashes a picture of something we used to be doing.
when i fall into a bed that is the landscape for a happiness
that seemed to never stale i cannot help but wonder what we started doing
that made everything so different.

and today,
we faced each other
but we did not face each other.
there was an incompleteness that
rode off with the elephant in that room.

i sat there wondering if it would have been easier to say
"this sucks, let's just forget it and go sleep together"
or if it's better to say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.

so if i just hate you a little bit,
if i talk about your big ugly glasses and
how you're always leaving your dishes in the sink
and how i'm sooooo glad i don't have to deal with your snoring anymore...

then i don't have to think of the bigger things:
about how i don't know how to pretend to be alright with this,
about how i have not slept soberly in weeks,
about how every time i think i'm moving on from this you seem to appear
and whether or not i wish you'd just stay away
or keep dragging me along
on this splitting end that seems to connect us.

02/12/2010

Posted on 02/12/2010
Copyright © 2024 Lauren Singer