The Poets
e. lovely
ONE MONTH AFTER:
i do not think you were in love with me.
i think that you loved me, but you were never in love with me.
you were in love with how eager i was to give you every part of myself, how eager i was to let my corpse be picked at by your vulture romance;
there is something so sinister about the way you love people.
there is an evil that exists within your capacity to give love;
it is a villain i tried to destroy but this devil knew my achilles heel and took no mercy.
2 MONTHS AFTER:
what was i supposed to do?
i made a home in the gap between your two front teeth.
locked myself away in a floorboard,
my telltale heart singing a love song to every passerby;
until sadness came and punched you in the mouth,
poison-ridden knuckles leaving a toxicity in your lips that spit me out with an eviction notice and the numbest of goodbyes;
where does a homebody go when the body has no home?
3 MONTHS AFTER:
getting over you once felt like trying to light a cigarette in a moving car with all of the windows down;
it now comes with the ease of writing my own name,
or counting to ten.
you are no longer the crickets humming outside my window,
singing me into a lonely slumber;
i no longer feel your phantom in my bed;
the empty sheets beside me are refreshing to roll onto,
no longer a reminder of my lonely,
the sheets are simply that —
sheets.
4 MONTHS AFTER:
i miss you.
no metaphors,
no euphemisms,
i miss you.
5 MONTHS AFTER:
my boy,
my love,
my broken-down car;
we sit on the side of the road,
hazards on;
i wish i had taken lessons on auto repair from my father.
SIX MONTHS AFTER:
do you love her?
can you confidently say you see the future in her eyes,
see the stars and the moon and the cosmic energy surrounding them?
does the universe live in her love?
50s style diners remind you of me, don’t they?
even when you’re eating at them with her?
even when you message me at three in the morning,
rainy night sending you into this existential anxiety,
apologizing for sending our love to the dusty shelves of a thrift store,
are you in love with her?
TODAY:
stop writing poems about me.
hypocritical, coming from me,
but we are very clear on how i feel about you.
i am a crystal ball, reflecting images of a happier me, a better life i am living without you in it,
but the crack on my side still itches and the moment you come around i will shatter.
we both know that.
so i will write beautiful poems about you, and i will beautifully share them in a beautiful room full of beautiful people,
and i’ll do that as long as i feel like,
because i finally know how i feel
about your ghost but i do not know how it feels about mine so quit writing poems about us.
butchered cornish hen,
i weep for you.
e. lovely is a poet, sculptor, and future art educator. follow their art and poetry at @thiebaudfan and @thisisaeulogy