Potential Heartbreak

Unsatisfied and a bit used

Nursing a hangover in an empty room

I think about the words I wasted on you

Potentials now lost, the adventures we’ll never share

Each appearing as invisible and tangible as the air

Surrounding me.

Your smiling face, in a dirty Red Sox cap

Rediscovering cribbage with my Dad, at the Lake House

Although he rags on you for being a Canuck,

And I laugh on the hammock

Looks at me from an empty picture frame.

Farther down the wall is the collage from

Our non-existent road trip, the time I didn’t meet

Your family (your mother loved me, by the way)

Our uncelebrated anniversaries, undefined magic moments

Next to the ticket stubs of the visits you won’t make

As the silent soundtrack of the CDs I never made plays.

The table in front of me is cluttered

With drafts of poems

I’ll never write as you sleep.

My cupboards are full of meals

We’ll never make and eat together.

My head is brimming with answers

To questions you never asked

As my secrets stay hidden behind all the things

You love about me but haven’t

Discovered.

Looking at these things,

I’m not angry.

And while I may

Mourn for unmade memories,

I feel mostly sorry for your ignorance.

That you gave up these things without a glance

For a few laughs, an easy lay, the character you play

And you play him well. Hell, I fell for it.

I gave you my heart, my body, my art

And you took it all without a return.

So as I clean out this room of potential

I take the 3 things you gave me,

The lessons you taught me:

You can’t share with someone who’s selfish,

You can’t make love to someone who fucks you;

You shouldn’t love someone who turns poetry into a trophy.

These are the last words I have for you,

No longer will you haunt my sentences

Hiding between the letters and sneaking into

The dots of my Is.

But let me close with this, with no deceit or motive,

Not even a play on words or decent rhyme,

just blatant honesty.

The night that we met, for the first time in my life,

As you walked away, I thought

I’m going to marry that man.

And while it’s silly at best.

There were things that you said,

Ways you moved, pieces falling into a puzzle that

All seemed to fit (despite my logic)

But I guess the finished product

Looked nothing like the box.

But, it was only potential, after all.

does that count as a loss?