February 12, 2013

• What He Took

  The first theft was music,
  in the form of song.
  I was cooking up a storm
  in our first house,
  singing along with a fave.
  He walked in,
  ignored my cheek
  and walked upstairs
  flipping the dial
  to “something that didn’t
  sound like crap.”
  The song died in my throat,
  and it was years
  before I understood
  that I never sang again
  where he could hear.

  The next thing was joy,
  in the guise of
  “Christ woman,
  how can you wake up
  so damned chipper?”
  Repeat.
  Followed by a chorus of
  “you know when you laugh
  like that, people look at you funny.”
  And i strangled the giggle
  rather than endure the stare
  that said I was a loon.

  Then came speech—
  “haven’t you ever heard
  of companionable silence?”
  I had…but believed the meaning
  was that both parties
  were comfortable with it.
  Guess I was notional at 30.

  Then came sex—
  a chorus of “not like that”,
  or how come we can’t,
  and it would have been better if you,
  until I came to doubt
  the touch of my hands,
  the taste of my skin,
  and slightest flex of my hips,
  and only school girls needed
  to mess with kissing.
  Whatever was i thinking?

  And when I could not bear
  to give one more thing,
  when i said enough
  he looked at me with hard eyes,
  and demanded to know
  why I thought
  I had ever given him one thing
  he ever needed.

  But that was all he took.

  • 4:51 pm
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