I wanted to make love to you with my
words, but they kept getting caught in the swell
of my lips. I’ve skipped stones across the surface
as an SOS, but I can’t reach you. It’s not for lack
of trying that I’m sending these packets of paper
via certified mail. You said, “I can’t believe that
you don’t even want to try,” and my throat closed
up like anaphylaxis. I choked, sternly informing
you that you checked out long ago, and I
was simply pulling the bandaid off that wound
so we could both heal. Love is a verb, and so
is lip service; but talk is cheap and you were
always better at that than love because any
real emotional investment was simply
too overwhelming for the machismo
beat of your heart. It’s funny-sad how all the
women before me were sluts and whores,
and as soon as I no longer wanted you, I
rose to the top of their ranks. I rode out the
wave hoping to find the key to my Pandora’s
box of emotion that I threw away long ago.
The best I could do was to look Hispaniola
in the eye the first time I came with him,
and as he collapsed into my chest, and
his hands grasped me like he was begging
at the breast of life, I saw a look in his eyes
that screamed of defeat. It was the same
look I saw in the dirty glass of the bathroom
mirror every day that I woke up next to you,
an empty shell, a parasite sucking me dry
so that no one ever noticed your own hollowness,
which became all too clear when I cut off the
blood flow, allowing that hornet in my head
the rest for which it had been begging for years.
