(no subject)

[sellardour]

Without your help, I pulled
myself up from the floor with some
remaining strength and with some
pain still tingling in the
back of my head
from where it had hit the blue walls
of your apartment.

I remember you did hold out
your hand, to show me the way
out into the early morning and had said
“This is true.” as an answer the question
I had asked you when I could tell you stood in
the silent darkness over me with your
hands set at your bare waist.

I knew then that I wanted to stay and knew
that I could not because of a tightness
crawling up from my behind my ribs
toward my face. I felt it under my chin.
The gravel of your driveway shifted
under the cut pride of my step.

This time, you did not cast down your eyes
as you cast me out and sent me to
walk the sidewalk home,
to add more distance between
myself and a place and person of
who I want nothing of
except everything.

All you let keep was a soreness
between my legs and between my
temples but I managed to come home,
not take off my coat or scarf,
but to sit down and drown at the kitchen table.

Now I sit and sit and light cigarettes under
the baseball cap covering the bruised side of my
face not at all very well and admit to the thrice
wound circles that press around my eyes
that I’m in crazy bad shape.