Ran

Funny how you were everything that I wanted – kind, considerate, gentlemanly, sweet, fun and chivalrous.

But I thought that you were all wrong for me. You had the wrong hobbies, wrong job, wrong friends, wrong background, wrong everything. But, later I realized that you were all right – you thought I was cool; took me places I’d never been; believed in me when I didn’t know that I needed or lacked that belief.

Maybe the cream would have curdled; the sun would have set; the white pure canvas would have become mottled with spots of imperfection over time. All things can’t stay the same. But, I ran before I could find out.

Still, for years afterward, I woke up with your name on my lips. I sometimes see someone on the street with your build or hear a song that takes me back to when we were swimming in youth and possibilities. I walk in the city and practice a surprised expression for when I might see you.

But this is not as much about you as it is about me. Is it always about me? Do others really exist or are they reflections of our projections and obsessions?

Whatever. I wish I hadn’t run. I wish I had learned to stay. Funny how things ended up this way.

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Love

You are love and sunshine and happiness. You made me feel better when I was desperately sad. You made me know it was okay to be sad.

You loved me despite everything. You bound through the world with so much love and energy, no one knows quite how to contain or handle you.

And they shouldn’t.

It’s kind of hilarious and amazing when you overwhelm people with it. Just with your being you.

You loved me for a year when I only loved you like a friend. I had a boyfriend and didn’t want you to love me like that. You slowly and subtly wooed me.
Partly singing that song at the top of your lungs jogging, in the car, on the street, at the grocery store. You made me feel everything. The good and the bad.

I grew to love you when you broke your arm. Because you needed something from me. You needed to be loved and taken care of. Your toughness couldn’t shield you.

I didn’t know exactly how to transition into being romantically and sexually involved with you. But I trusted and loved you. It quickly became fun and easy and it made me laugh that you liked those 90’s panties with the bikini straps because your girlfriend in high school worked at a fancy lingerie store so you associated sexiness with 90’s panties.

Those are the things that I love about life. The love. The associations. The craziness of it all.

I want you to know that I don’t regret a second of it. I want you to know that you are loved and I am sorry it is so hard. I want you to love yourself the way that you love other people. I want you to take care of yourself and have everything in the world that you need and want. I want you to feel everything, the good and the bad, and know it is okay. I want you to know that if I could be there for you right now, I would.

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Make Something Together

As we break up and I feel hate for you and then miss you and reunite with you I get sad and relieved everytime I get my period because a creature made by you and me could have united us forever and I have the stupid fantasy a child made by you and me in a moment of sex and connection would inspire or force or compel us to communicate better and treat each other peacefully and with love because we would have done something made something beautiful together instead of just our passion and fighting and passion and fighting ugly cycle but I am relieved when my menstrual blood flows too because I know having a child with you would tie me to you forever and all the feelings of suffocation and being silenced and not cared for and not loved and all your lack of affection and lack of respectful communication would make it torture to have to try to raise a child with you.

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teenage hormones

You had long hair and greasy skin.
You were tall and thin.
Some might say lanky.
I dated your best friend.
That always seems to be okay in the movies. Not sure about life.
How come in the movies it is always okay when you do your best friends?
Or your boyfriends best friend?
Or that sidekick character who isn’t central, but everyone has done them.
Either way, it didn’t appear to impact you. You had a serious crush on me.
You went to the dance with my best friend. I think as an excuse to be in the same limo as me.
When high school was ending, you wrote me a really long note expressing all sorts of love and emotions and feelings you had towards me.
I couldn’t believe you felt all that and kept it in.
When you graduated, I never saw you. Well I guess I occasionally saw you in church holding your girlfriends hand.
I couldn’t believe you would hold hands in church. Or go to church at all really, but I guess I was there, too, so.
I wonder if you would have confessed your love to me if we were older, or if that was just a result of teenage hormones.

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Disrespect, a list.

Disrespect:

1. Letting other women post provocative things on your Facebook page.
2. Telling me repeatedly how “cute” and “beautiful” other women were and never saying it to me.
3. Making sarcastic remarks or jokes EVERY TIME you paid for my dinner or anything else. To waitresses! Just don’t pay then-how humiliating to me.
4. Repeatedly announcing to your friends and to me that you would “always be single.”
5. Being late EVERY SINGLE TIME and never calling to let me know. Never apologizing.
6. Flaking on dates with me.
7. Rolling your eyes when I talk.
8. Never doing anything in bed excepting sticking your dick in and fulfilling your own fantasies and pleasure. No foreplay. No care for my body’s pleasure.
9. Dirtying dishes, eating, etc in my home and never pitching in.
10. Booty-calling me two nights in a row and then ignoring all my calls and texts the whole next day while you were just sitting on your ass at home fucking around on Facebook.
11. Never taking any responsibility for your nastiness and sarcasm or apologizing.
12. Telling me “shush be quiet” because you were on the phone with a woman IN MY HOME.
13. Returning my car late and empty of gas EVERY TIME you borrowed it.
14. Having me take BART home late on a weekend night and walk home from BART instead of driving me LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD when you had MY FUCKING car.
15. Talking loud and late on the phone while I was trying to sleep.
16. Letting me carry shit up and down up and down for my garage sale while you sat around my apartment.
17. Never putting in the effort to attend an event with my friends or anything important to me.
18. Walking half a block ahead of my friend and me while you talked on the phone instead of to us.
19. Lying in bed in the morning and saying “coffee” without saying “good morning.”
20. Always, over and over, taking me for granted.

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I remember

I remember that you were glib and smooth and charming when we first met.

I remember that I thought you were interesting and brilliant. You had knowledge about the world and about places I’d never even heard of.

I remember how you made me feel special.

I remember how you made me laugh.

I remember how you manipulated me. When I called you on it, you made a sad face as if you were hurt by something I’d said.

I remember that you were cheap and never carried the groceries let alone paid for them.

I remember that you always had to have your way, even when it was my birthday and I wanted to get Japanese, but you wanted Greek.

I remember that you made me walk those ten blocks to your apartment in the dead heat of august because you were busy working on your paper and wanted me to bring you dinner.

I remember that you liked to make me feel guilty for not trusting you when you said you’d be at my place and showed up five hours late.

I remember listening to your monologues about your problems and what you should do with your life.

I remember that you never remembered a thing I said.

I remember that you said I would remember you after we were done and have regret

it’s true, I remember all this now.

You were a jerk. That I will never forget.

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you were here and here and here

I remember this.
From 6 years ago.
Last time I swam in a man and then lost him.

Waking up in the morning.
Panic. Shortness of breath.
Cold stone lumps in my gut.

Because you were here and here and here.
Around me and in me.
My mind body bed heart phone email.
Now you are removed.
Wound is open.

I wake up and in that half-awakefulness.
Face it. Remember.
You are gone. From here and here and here.
Panic. Can’t breathe.

I remember this.
I can’t remember how long it took.
Before it stopped.

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