Curse

 "Some poets are far more thematic than I am,"
I said. 

  My stomach knotted at the knowing...
This one is about you too.

 You were trite. My spirit was like nectar and you did not hesitate. You needed someone to manipulate. I still hate myself. When you ironed your button ups it was impossible not to liquify and evaporate into thin air.
 I'm still not solid.
 I believed in you. Did you know that? I really, really believed in you. You would never admit it. But other people did too. After you moved back to Michigan I talked to a handful of scholars who admired your work. Each said something to the affect of "He is a smart kid...too smart...a smart ass even."

 Except I just tacked on that last part because, let's face it, they were too holy to say garbage like that.


 Bible college did and did not serve us well. It makes absolute and zero sense. Sometimes, when I am drunk enough my college years become this incredibly eloquent, ethereal story. But the end of "us," is still unforgivably sobering. And I find myself always wrapping up in my aztec quilt and calling it a night.
 I once saw the Facebook status of a girl who had just gotten dumped by a poet. "Never date a poet," she said, "They will write and re-write you as they see fit." I am twenty-five years old. I retract and re-write you every time my heart beats. Retract. Re-write. Retract. Re-write. Do you hear it?
 Whether it is the boisterous proclamation that the Lord Jesus Christ has finally healed me or a bulleted list of how to properly grieve your first love, I find you still come up. Irony does not play fair. I talked about it once in counseling. And even under evaluation it is far too easy to get lost in the shapes of the white putty-puffed popcorn caked ceiling.
  This is my homage to Rorschach.

 You show up there too.

 "So, how did you get over him?"
 They ask.

 "I stared off in space a lot..."
  I say.

 Yes, just imagine it for a moment. I am going to be the first person to write about how staring far and wide enough into chasms of nothingness can help you erase the black and blues of a lost love.

  It is kind of true.

  "Don't you ever feel like you lost the one God had for you?"
   They ask.
 
   Yes.

  I hung on every word that came out of your mouth like it was ordained. Maybe it was.
  When I get really Calvinistic I tell people I lost my first love in a Michigan forrest fire. And I think about that summer we spent together where we almost lost our virginity to each other but we didn't because I started my period instead. Maybe that was "God's will," or the cosmic stars aligning...that my vagina started bleeding just in the knick of time to save what was left of my heart that would be later carved out of my fragile, feeble chest. This is why I am still not grown up enough for sex.
   I am twenty-five years old and Tennessee backroads still smell like you.
   I wonder if God made them out of the same dust as you.
   Probably.

   The man I love now wears dark flannel.
   He is a stable house.
   He does not keep me guessing and he does not shut me out when he doesn't want to talk about it.
   We started dating in April.
   And maybe we won't last.
   I can't predict the future.

   Other then
   You don't get to have me.


  How does it feel to catch a bolt of lightening?