prelude to disaster

if that was love, you can count me out. equations
don't mean shit to me anyway-- i nearly failed fifth grade math
and i'm incapable to adding up the number of times
you were good to me
and subtracting that quantity from the number of times
you so severely fucked me over that i couldn't find my legs
couldn't recognize strength to walk out
leave, or
disappear. & you told me: "this is who i am;
i will never change." which i must have thought was endearing
or cute or something that made my heart beat twice its limit
because i must have believed, then, that you were honest.
like the time you said: "i'll never do that to you, i'll never treat you
that way" and i fell for it- because that was thing to do, when you're falling
in love, you fall for everything- but the thing is- can you see this?-
what you did was incomparable to those tedious flits of fuck-ups.
you may not have fucked the other girl
but you let her in, and out, and in and out.
do you even remember how many times
you tried to kill yourself
in the midst of our love-struck wanderings?
do you remember august, in gramercy. the fight
with your mom- how you were "happy" but she pushed you
over the edge and it scared you how everything was good
and you still wanted to die.
or late january, in essex. your dad
wrestling a gun out of your hands. and how you'd begged me that very day
to come up early. and i couldn't. i should have known, or-
that big fight, april?, when you fell away
just to enjamb yourself back ever so slightly to let me know
that yes, you'd had to go to the hospital. because you wanted
to hurt yourself. but you didn't want to talk about it.
for days.
again. and then that summer.
it was always as if i was one step behind you,
never seeing what should have been so obvious.
when you tried to end us in june- because you didn't know how to be happy-
what a fucking cop-out (even though it's true). and the shitstorm of georgia:
the yelling, the mania, the constant fights, the ruin of two summer weeks.
enter october, 2007. someday i'll ship you a prize
awarding you the esteemed award for contributing heavily
to the worst month of my life.
i guess you can't understand (or care) that every time i open my closet
i see you there, cross-legged on the floor, your eyes wide and stark
blood and bruises caking your arms, epi-pen angled toward your veins,
scratches and pin-pricks spotlighting where you'd already stabbed,
empty pill bottles next to your feet. how i held you that night,
my arms a vice grip around your trembling form. we couldn't stop
the shaking: not then, not ever. and then-
no, it wasn't over-
how weeks later you tugged me into your grasp; we were standing
in a door frame, essex again, you said how sorry
you were, and how embarassed
you were. how that wouldn't happen again. and truly, it wasn't until months later-
april again, 2008, when you called me and ranted, bitched,
threw a fucking fit and ended us. then checked yourself into the psych ward
not two hours after that hang up.


that's just it.
those weeks.
that's where
we are now.
not us, but
time. and it
shakes me
to my core.
april-may.
i won't give
you my tears
my heart
my lifeline.
not anymore.
you had
your chances.