GROCERY AISLE BASTARD

Exceedlingly
Bastard behavior.

You bastard.
Lifted me up with your acrobat arms
So tenderly placing my small-boned hands
In yours,
Upon the trapeze.

You placed a magnet
With a thousand legs into my pocket which
Scurried up to my heart, burrowed into the most
Functional part,
The life-giving part
And stained your name there.

You swing me over the earth
And promise my heart won’t fall out
Onto the net.

And it does.
It does!
You bastard.

And then you run away
Into the grocery aisle and hide
Behind scorn and punctured tires
And memories past.

And as my heart lays bubbling there,
Quivering there, gasping for its last breath,
And I slowly and cautiously step down
From the tight-rope ladder,
Amazed at the show I just witnessed,

The one-man show with me as star and audience,

I snap a photograph of you.

You embrace a young-thing (24)
Who you try to imagine some mystery with,
Someone you can brainwash, again,
To never leave you.

And you fall in love not with her, but
The safety of your shadow.
And she's young enough,
And dumb enough,
To let you hide behind her's too.
She calls you her manly-man.

She's only ever had a daddy.
She's never known a man.

Bastard's are always left again,
And alone with the pain of past blood.

It won't go away.
It won't go away until you...

It’s written there on my skin
And in my blood and on the scars of my palms
Which so tightly gripped the bar.

I will love you forever.
Exceedingly.
You bastard.

At least you've got that part that's true.


stephanie lorentzen-jordan



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