check "yes"

In his arms flecked with paint he'd never held
something so carefully as he once hadn't held her heart.
Properly she sat beside him now,
beside where he'd once felt
her and she couldn't bring herself to look at him.
She could talk, she could breath, still,
and so she supposed she'd feel his eyes
all over her, still. Things hadn't changed.
It'd been a year, locked on swollen skin
and he said what she'd needed to hear.
The words that made her fall, still
she saw him for what she'd wanted back when and then
she wanted it to be too late, to be so unforgiven.
Still he'd broken, the one place she'd never given
and living here still, the two together sit--the space between expanding
once lives, now cement; and she's supposed to be the one to fight.
The ants are crawling on her skin, she lets them--his eyes
eating away her t-shirt and jeans
stewing in her nakedness, she has no choice but to conceed to his
memorizing, photographing--his photographic memory she'd meant
to ask him to stop but instead fallen asleep still kneeling, head lain carefully in his lap.
Like his arm 'round her shoulder, he'd shaken her 'wake to save
himself--casualty, moves--and "Something In The Way She Moves" plays
and she hates herself all over again for letting him
cheat and win, the boy--little boy she'd first loved.
Fed every cliche
ripping at the seams of every stuffed animal
plastic flower, puppy dog, diamond heart-shaped necklace
her baby, two time valentine
and still, she said what she needed to say--
he swears he's changed, for the third time
and she wants to,
needs to,
has to,
seems to
believe.
But believings not enough in a world worth tasting
tactile & stimulating--the left over spit up in a restaurant napkin
she'd been.
Rejection at the root of every hair he'd ever spun
around a finger he then placed on the tip of another's tongue
he'd taste anything--his prayer for feeling,
his quell for an otherwise emotionless
him, still.
She will never understand how she came to be this way
this person so apart from these, otherwise so easily appeased
she has him to thank for only that--his entiredy changed.


She left to just
breath
learn to play, alone
she wants to sing, where she's torn
and mend, to run, on the outside
to lay and see her bones exposed
her confidence returned to her
stolen in the night.
the victim, she only sees his eyes
hands, self on her when she closes her own.

"Neon" - The Knife