goodbye

I wish I could say

when you had left me

that everything we went through together

ceased to be relevant. That they were not at all

beautiful, not at all touching,

not all true. I wish I could say

that I ceased to remember at the very moment

that you began to forget me. Every single

Regina Spektor song, every night we spent

singing our troubles away, every cup of coffee

that I savored while you looked on with distaste.

Instead I lie on a bed in a dim room we do not share,

and I think, it’s lucky that we fizzled out

before the damage grew worse and forgetting

is no more an option than the only way

to carry on.

I write poems in the office—

                love has always been one for poetry—

and you study in the library. 

Life goes on

as it should.

you do not own me

You do not own me.

I should have said that way before.

I should’ve said that at your first utterance

of a promise.  A promise I should not have called

a promise, because I paid it with a kiss.

I do not owe you anything.

I should have said that before you forced me

to capitulate, before you took me in your arms

and mapped the terrain of my body with your hands,

before you claimed my nights, my days, my secrets—

my life. The tragedy of this age—people go about

thinking they can buy, that they can own

anything.

We have gone from being people to being

only things  of relative worth.

A heart is nothing

but a beating apparatus inside our chests,

indicating life or death.

But I’ll defy! This heart inside my chest

can love and suffer and it will:

carve my imprint out on the malleable earth, my heart,

make sure we are remembered.  

This heart is not yours.

You have not earned it, nor have I

given it to you.