Leaving.

She would write these poems all over the apartment. They were hidden, under rugs, behind pictures, on the backsides of curtains, everywhere on anything. They were good poems, but it bothered me that she wrote them on things we would have to pay for later. The girl didn't believe in later, so these things meant nothing to her. She was always waiting for the bottom to drop, she thought the worst would occur and she wouldn't have to answer for things like writting on walls and stains on floors. I did love her. There was never a single moment of doubt about that. It made it hard to leave when I thought of her sitting on a bare hardwood floor with her knees pulled up to her chest. I almost couldn't breathe when I thought about it. I pushed that picture out of my mind and tried to remember the bad times, the bad times made it possible for me to cut the ropes. Her moods and her tantrums; Her secrets and her whims. Everything was hers. I think thats why I took the things I did. I could prove they were mine. I had receipts and proof that no one could take aways from me. She didn't understand things like that, I could have taken her things too, because she didn't save receipts. She laughed at me for being so practical. I wished for a moment that I had it in me to be so hurtful. I wished that she had hurt me on purpose, so I could have escaped the guilt, so I didn't have to tell her I couldn't take it anymore. I wondered if I would move on and fall in love with someone else, shake the way she taught me to look at things. The problem was, part of me didn't want to move on. What other woman would know about making love on green rugs and the importance of tasting life rather than just looking at it? I liked it when she was strange and excited when I told her she tasted like cigarettes and cherry sours. It wasn't her eccentricities that got in the way. It was her smile. The way she smiled sadly at me while she was bleeding out on our floor. The way she smiled when I got her dressed in the morning and made her eat at lunch. And the smile that almost killed me was the one that she gave to people that didn't have to go home and wash blood off of the floor. She smiled for Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel and all the others, credited them with saving her life. Maybe they did. I hope they did, because in that moment I knew that I couldn't save her. She couldn't let me in, they were taking up too much space. Just like her record collection took up one whole room. It was her protection. I didn't want to take the record player because she had never owned one.

She had never gotten to listen to her records until she met me. I never owned a record until I met her.I lived with her long enough to know she would see the sybolism there. It was enough to turn me into a god-damned poet.