I put a wet paint sign on my heart to keep you from sitting on it
You were never one for following signs
Maybe you should’ve followed the sign from heaven
Raining from God
Like Lucifer falling from the sky
Slapping you in the face
Maybe you shouldn’t have said “I love you” so soon
What did you think would happen?
Did you think we would change?
We would stop bickering and crying
Drops in the oceans forming at our feet
Did you think Oprah would appear and say “look under your seat, you’re not broken”?
Maybe I shouldn’t have held your hand that morning
When the sun was bright and sultry
And our fingers held tight
Fighting the slip and slide of moist hands
Grasping for peace on a pleasant day
Sometimes I thought of leaving it behind altogether
Sometimes I thought of leaving you behind altogether
But your clutch
Not on my heart
On the butterflies in my stomach
On my lungs squeezing them until I’m breathless
Asphyxiating me in your sky
You kept me close
I look into your eyes and the flash is gone
The wrinkles at the corners that used to form when you saw me have faded
(my mother should be so lucky)
I walked alone last week
The crunch of chilled leaves radiating into my ears
Like each throb of your pulse
Each blow of your footsteps on my front porch
The wind whipped my hair into birds’ nests
Striking my crimson face with a tender force I thought only you could impart
What did I see in you?
Maybe I saw the promise of not spending the night watching “The Notebook” alone
Maybe I saw a calm in you I wanted for myself
Maybe I was selfish
Maybe the curl of your fingers on my knee was my addiction
Or my downfall
Or maybe both
I do not regret the favorable moments we had
However few and far between
I regret the time I slammed the door and the lock broke
I regret the blooming peonies that found themselves crushed on the floor
I regret that there were ever parallels between us and those godda**ed peonies
I regret the collateral damage of our brawls
But I do not regret you
Don’t flatter yourself, baby
I regret what has happened to me but I do not even think about you
My heart is scabbing over
Starting to heal
And clotting before everything is lost
And heal is not the same as painless
But now is the decision between new skin
Breaking through a crust of ache and sting
Or mangled scar tissue