You wished the lights switched off
They’re off. What do you want me to say
Repeat the lie that I destroyed you?
Yet you’re here and quite alive
You’d like me to know how much you hurt
I feel pain but it’s not yours
Dripping from myself and others
You tossed so softly down the stairs
You didn’t knife straight through my heart
Just the hopes it held locked up
They came out, you saw, excised
Surgery one of your masteries
So why did we fail?
I lied to myself
You accepted my lies
Polished and embellished yours
Made me think them true
The only truth is you’re in this room
A room you’ll leave with a newer story
I won’t recognize the details
Just who made them up
Did we really know each other?
You taught me what was bad was good
(For a while supremely good)
That I should never trust a memory
On that point you are right
Recall is the sort of romance
Few of us now wish to read
But you knew who you were
Told me what you weren’t
Once I lived to believe it
You still do
There’s no chapel for this sort of union
Memories chafe our ring fingers
Tighter than a soldered joint
Rough, discolored, pitted
Our bands still good for scratching walls
Blocking every street we knew
The ones that you made all face you