"La Danse"
the mornings I spend with her
feel as if they take place at a remove from the rest of my existence –
her legs intertwined with mine, pink-gold sunlight dancing across her collarbones
I want to wrap myself into and around her and never let go
she feels like magic beneath my fingertips and yet –
I know she is no good for me
that when she leaves a part of me empties out and floods the spaces she’s left
but never flows back to me
I know that she does not love me,
and that she never will
that these ethereal mornings are to her as inconsequential
as a cup of coffee on a bench somewhere comfortable but
unremarkable
she tells me I am not someone she is proud to share
I am not, I am not, I am not –
she digs at the holes where I am unfinished and I swell to fill these spaces with some substance that is
like me and
also not
she throws pennies and bits of rock at my window while I sleep
and I drink too much
she is gone for days and days and weeks and
when she comes back to me I hold her as if she had never left at all
sometimes, at night, I cry
because she is so beautiful and her touch is so familiar
I know she is no good for me –
that she takes and takes and takes and to her I am not sacred,
to her I am incomplete, to her
I am not lovely
sometimes, lonely in her stead,
I try to mold myself into the person she wants me to be
she comes to me now
in moments of vulnerability –
as I hold fresh peaches, alone, at the market
as I weep at the Museum of Fine Arts
hers is the voice I hear
when I pause at the things I have not created, the books I have not read, the person I have not become
I know she is no good for me –
still
in the morning
I miss her