I remember the awful late summer

The one you and she labeled Indian

as if the rounded, golden harvest moon

belonged to you and would have nothing

to do with the rest of us. We were specks,

mere witnesses to your cheap passion play,

the audience and we watched, bored,

as you unraveled a drama so fucking familiar that we all yawned

and said, Shit not again..

Remembering how you left us.

How you left leaving all you said you stood for.

And how utterly devastated I remember us all.

Such bullshit: who had given you such power?

But I, then twenty-something and trusting

in my grey and pleated skirt, my long, summer-bronzed legs

would still make my way to your high, high room,

never running as far as I could, or should have,

- away instead of to -

my auburn hair a bolt of silk it flew out

behind me ~ streaks of hot fire and damnation.

But it was she you saw as your great beauty.

No matter what was offered up here, it could never be enough.

Could never measure up to her a absolutem Aphrodite fakery..

Her pale and precious alabaster that you spelunked at every turn,

a cave diver you dove off the deep end

then wondered why nobody would come for your cries..

How you held her unattainable otherness before us.

Esteemed, pedestalled, her perfect, and so-called beauty

streaking past us all as the two of you ran and ran and ran

shirking all responsibility.

You liked,

You said: How she flirted in front of her girlfriends

You said: she said, Sorry girls he’s mine and it made you feel “so good.”.

You said: she touched your arm and it made you feel worthy and desired.

You said: you liked being with her because when she walked into a room everybody noticed her, which by default meant that they did not notice me because logic would dictate that if they did there would be no necessity of she.

You said: you stayed with her, alone with her near the Quai something something.

You said: her husband was away.

You said; you spent the night talking then went to your respective beds.

You said: I swear, nothing happened

You said: a lot things.

I knew in that exact moment it was bullshit.

That all of it was bullshit.

Our early love-letters. The slow and easy courting. The way you kissed me

and said, “Oh nobody & etc… like you…”

I am older now, maybe wiser. The eyes at least

they’ve opened. I live in full-knowledge, no room

for your denials. They mean nothing anymore.

Take your goddesses, your fucks, your one-nighters,

your teases, your office extension pleases and take

the stink of it with you because one more whiff, babe

I think of the possibilities. The ways it could have been.

Then I look at the spectacular ways in which you fucked it all up.