The Hedgehog
I wonder if the pale dog vomit is a sign that you and I just don’t work, and your canine is psychic enough to pick up on all of our fucked up energy.
I wonder how you must have felt, texting me after pleasuring yourself to another woman. I wonder if your mom would hate you as much as I do.
Head on the second date probably wasn’t a good idea. Neither was calling me your wife.
You can’t have been lying about all your love, which just means you think love is shrouded by shame. You think love is what you experience with me and like it exists as a plum, separate.
Plum on the deck, decomposing in the sun as you head inside to fuck your phone. And you think what matters is that you came back for me, for us, to take me inside and put me back in the cold.
I would’ve bragged about you for the rest of time. Now, I fear the nagging unworthiness that might encompass me if I boast about you again. The lie it would be to say that it has all been well and good, that you are the man of my dreams.
Though my dreams were never a good standard, seeing as they’re filled with terror. And terror is what causes all of this; I shouldn’t have looked at your screen. But righteousness is the drug that keeps me, consumes me, because there is always a new, skin-itching, flesh-eating high to find inside.
It is my mistake to be a romantic, to be a lover. A grave choice and I’ve been so dedicated to it, even since I was a girl. Not once has it served me.
I’ve been led down roads of panic, nausea, betrayal. All at the behest of my suitors. They only left me pithy gifts in return.
They collect dust in my home, but I have to keep them. There was a point, they scream. You’ve experienced love, they insist.
A tapestry for infidelity, flowers for emotional abuse, a necklace for rape. And now, you: a planter for porn addiction. I’d much rather have a planter for porn addiction, but I try not to let myself forgive you on that premise.
And I want so badly to forgive you; I want so badly to be loved. We were so close, so close to the golden ray in my head, cutting through the mold. It’s all humid now, as if I wish to raise centipedes and toads inside my own chest and skull.
I miss the arid life we once had, the one where you touched the nape of my neck and I felt my nerves wake for the very first time. I think we are lost now, to rolling fog and mangled sheets.
When we fuck, the ecstasy hasn’t come back. Instead, it has formed itself into shivers, into the lump in my throat that holds the weight of my lovelessness. Excitement is abundant, mostly because I am in shock that you want me. In shock that we can still engage in this lover’s dance, despite the fact that I have never felt so alone in the ballroom.
And when you hold me, I can feel every bone in my body, like a paper mache frame hastily glued onto sticks. I waited for the wind to blow me away in your yard. I waited to dissolve into a puddle once I stepped in it.
