seventeenth.

when people ask why i stayed with him for so long, it was because i could.
the reason i fucked him on the first date, the reason i said i loved him, and ultimately the reason i broke it off with a five minute phone call just shy of a three year anniversary.

there is something to be said about monogamy.
...i certainly don't know what it is right now, but i'll get back to you when i figure it out.

and i'm not angry at him in the way that i'm not angry at the catholic church or people who cut me off in rush hour traffic -- there are certain disgusting inevitabilities in navigating your twenties on the postage stamp i call home, the collection plate preying on the poor or people who must have gotten their license on a technicality because JESUS CHRIST IT'S CALLED A BLINKER USE IT.

he was home.  i was gonna have his kids, picked out their names, was gonna inherit his house -- now he stands to do that alone.  and i'm happy about that.

so here's to pregnancy tests taken in mcdonald's bathrooms, here's to under the cover blowjobs in a DIY house surrounded by sleeping crustypunks, here's to canada and lying on the hood of a collective car watching meteor showers, here's to a night i cried because i thought he'd be angry i dyed my hair, and here's to the first notch on my bedpost.  long after i sell this bed frame, i will not forget him.

i must confess

i was thinking the other day

(or some form of thought, it's difficult to form sentences four PBRs in)

about love poetry.

about my own regurgitated passion,

and i thought about picking at my scabs as some sort of distant metaphor

reopening wounds.  

by trying to speed the process of healing, 

you are prolonging scarring.  

i thought about why i've gone back to hanging out with 

a person who once broke my heart.

it wasn't her fault, 

not really.

even though my mother tells me to not get burned again,

i've always been a masochist.

by trying to speed the process of healing

you are 

prolonging scarring

and i couldn't help but wonder why i want 

to have my cake and eat it too,

these disappearances and reappearances of need

craving a sign from anyone, anything 

that i am important. 

i picked at my lips, a game of removal with as little pain as possible

success (moderate).  bleeding (imminent).  ugliness (a permanence).

healing, speeding of, attempt

scarring, prolonging, only 

masochism

i think