*two today – a block has arrived

#1

i didn’t know you wouldn’t be there

i thought this was our life

i thought i could let go

i thought more than you did

you were too busy making excuses, for desires i didn’t share

your words

i had just healed, from decades old blunt edge memories slicing my shoulder blades

i took a long time to heal

under your tutelage

then

like i suspected, but forgot

i was opened back up, spilling secrets i forgot to keep

you walk out of rooms you can’t win, my wounds seep, what we shared

lies

you couldn’t show up

to watch our creation

drip into porous public bathroom floors

joining

everyone else

#2

walk across stages of life

raised above those who have come before with hand movements, tears, and smiles affirming and wishing you will take this thing further

direction?

i can’t tell you that one

go left

then right

wait, it’s later than we thought

you should have left hours ago to a place where sorrow goes, this coward act will never be enough to root you in a place firmly embedded to sunday night dreams

i wake and realize we’re still here, granted another day to wish away your spoiled-milk smile leaving me listless and in denial that a river holds answers, that you won’t make the same mistake that helped the snake hold a grin through first sin, a forked tongue finding its way into me

i’ll shed my skin

and slither on