His head in my hands,
a tired smile, swollen eyes
The mention of potatoes and eggs
for breakfast, maybe sausage too
Big, strong, pale hands with handsome,
almost pretty, fingernails
Him reaching out and gripping me
A man who won’t let me go,
even as I squirm and make excuses

I don’t cook as much as I used to
It used to be me coming home with the
freshest possible store-bought salmon
It used to be me trying fancy things like Italian
risotto, carmelized pears, rasberry-glaze and pork tenderloin
My old boyfriend got the best of my cooking yes he did
Back when I had hope
I have a little less of that now
But its coming back around,
I can feel it

I came home to his sleepy morning smile
We folded up together like kittens
put “brekkie”, as we call it, on hold
We slept and when we woke he told me:
Let’s try to stay together for as long as we can
He had that firm grip of his on me
I was squirming
I made myself settle down,
I said, I’ve been thinking the same thing

Can we afford filet mignon?
Am I still capable of a wine balsamic reduction sauce?
I stepped out of bed and put my feet on the ground in
a wholly different way

I cleaned real well for the first time in a while
I rearranged the furniture and asked him,
how do you like it?
I stood there looking at our bedroom:
our bed, my desk, the retro nightstand,
the brightly colored artwork
I let myself watch it evolve
The bed moved from the center of the room,
to over by the wall,
to the window,
and back to the center
give it a few years and it would
be all of those places
Give it a few years, give it a few years…

I watched the pictures move,
the tie-dye tapestry taken down,
put back up,
then taken back down again for good
I saw pictures of us,
only we don’t have any yet
I’ve been so shell-shocked I feel,
that I haven’t documented a thing
Don’t want to look back someday and
remember how good we had it
If it doesn’t work,
I don’t want to remember it at all.
You criticize me for this,
Don’t.

I need a big dream again, some hope
He is a bubble blown and I am a
little girl watching and waiting for him to pop
Too often I reach out and destroy the man myself