Toxin
I never knew love could be dark and decrepit
before our paths crossed like a jumped train track.
Every time we speak on the phone, I can hear you
sucking on a cigarette like a breath of anger
that isn’t long enough for the words you’re holding back,
then you exhale with a force as if it’s the only thing
that could keep you from saying something hurtful.
Where do you get off?
You are the necromancer that’s resurrected these feelings
I worked so hard to bury.
You are the toxin I’ve inhaled like second hand smoke
I never wanted to be around but felt obliged to be polite about.
This dichotomy of feeling
has been the worst of side effects so far.
They come in waves and trade places.
Sometimes I am so fucking angry,
then so miserably hurt and beaten down
that I will go for days without really tasting
anything that I’ve eaten.
I don’t know why some days are harder than others
but it makes me want to fast forward through my life
even if it meant missing out on the break I keep waiting to be given.
There are days when the anger will only run for hours,
but, when it’s going I want to scream in your face
or speak more poignantly through broken glass.
Once I’ve exhausted those thoughts, I think
about bargaining with a number of my appendages
like poker chips just to be back in your bed.
To have one more night, to be more thorough,
kiss the places I may have rushed past, hold you closer and longer.
To say “I love you”
when you looked at me with curiosity and warmth
and asked “What?”.
I never knew love and hate could be so closely related,
I had heard the saying, but never understood how it applied.
Like most beautiful women, you are a peddler of foolish thoughts
and I have many to discard.
The features of your face and length of your kiss would go first.
Your plunging neckline in a dress shirt , cone shaped breasts
lighted by the television and watching you walk out of the room
in nothing but a t-shirt
may never leave my mind, but I wish to God they would.
This can’t be what love is like, I tell myself
when it turns black and makes me wish my internal injuries
would manifest physically, just so I can lie in a hospital bed and point angrily,
“It was you, you did this, you did this to me!!
I want to be more mature than that,
I want you to be the one who is overreacting and emotional
but, you’ll just turn your head to exhale with a force and otherwise appear calm,
sucking on that silent but deadly toxin that you are.
