Anger, resentment, residue sediment of annoyance--
tis a pity these are the things I remember you by.
Not for the happiness you caused once, or for the
joy friends found in your company,
but for the jockeying for attention, the labor of
hearing you speak and watching your
fatiguing eyes and lips,
for feeling less than human,
less than feminine, less than wallpaper.
I understood the seediness of your
aquamarine, pallid, and marble-chill reaction,
the sneer in your undefinably moody face, but
not why things had to end this way.
I don't see how you can advise me and
teach me how I should hatchet my affairs--
we're wired so differently sometimes--and
not put yourself in my shoes and see you do
something categorically uncharacteristic -
deviant from what you told me so bluntly and
so like a stranger.
I can only hope selfishly that I gave back
to you an equal quality of a time.
You put to rest our happinesses;
their ghosts are much less pleasant.