there is a spider i’m letting live in the window above my desk. i don’t think about him very often, but when i do, i think about you. i think that maybe i keep him as a small reminder. some days i consider getting rid of him.
last night I dreamed I was in your apartment again. everything was different. everything was clean. there were windows where there weren’t before. I said “look, there’s sunlight on your kitchen table,” and you smiled. I hope that means everything is beautiful for you now.
I am stuck in the pause between hurt and healing. I do what I can to forget. I put on my mask and perform for the men who come calling.
a delicate dance. an orchestrated circus act. I put on my best. the one the crowd likes. I stand in front of the mirror until it doesn’t look like I’ve been crying my whole life. he doesn’t stand up to greet me. I don’t look at him enough to know if he’s looking at me. I study the menu like I don’t know that I’m going to order a well vodka soda tall with lime. the conversation dances between music and what type of partner we’ve been in the past. what type of partner we hope to be in the future. I laugh at his jokes. I wonder if he’s a real artist or just a man who says he is.
he never compliments me, except to say: you sound like a great mother. you’re really self aware. but I want to know: do you think I’m pretty? do I look like the type of girl you could wake up next to every day? I try to imagine his arms around me. the arms he keeps on his side of the booth that never venture anywhere close to mine. maybe there is still a veil through which I see other men. or don’t see them. can’t see them.
he hugged me goodbye and it was the first time I’d felt nothing in awhile.
In the car, I look him up on the internet and find out his art is very real. but does that change anything?
ALT
