The wilting hours now begin to yawn
between our parting looks 
You’ll soon pose me in some gallery
or print me in your books
Strewn across the coffee tables
of all your literary friends
They gleefully rifle through the wreckage
as our love surely ends

It’s a responsibility you won’t accept
but there’s a cruelty inherent
owned by the one who wields a pen
the one who is the poet
I marvel at the shade of paint you mix
colliding all your thoughts upon our story
Your sensitivity truly is a gift
but do you not feel how it might hurt me

There are both perspectives to consider
two bodies acted every scene
you’re free to treasure each memory
but there should be some privacy
Turning your lost lovers into sculpture
some gleaming grotesque bust
You let strangers touch my hidden parts
they grope my flaws in their disgust

You walk tall, in some new jacket
signing all your pages
while I stare at my deformed reflection
nakedly measured by your gauges
Though you don’t mean to be
and though you never meant to
each line cuts so deep in me
your rhymes can be so cruel…
 

[2022]