Conversation
For a while there
I had two modes of conversation:
one when I was with her,
which involved a wide range of topics
and could be interesting and entertaining
– to her, at least apparently –
and one when I wasn’t with her,
which involved talking about her,
and must’ve bored the shit out of others.
Since the last time she dumped me
I’ve avoided conversation
as much as I can.
My Last Affair
My last affair,
and it will probably be indeed my last affair,
crumbled because of a conflict
between contra-stereotypical objectives.
She wanted sex but was afraid of love,
but being old,
all I wanted was love,
but took sex
as but a pleasant expression of it.
Gained Weight
She dumped me eight or nine times
before finally fading away,
taking anywhere from a few hours
to a month and a half
before restoring cordial relations
after each dumping.
After one of the longer interludes
she came by my house one day
when her ex had the kids after school,
and after our usual sharing
of a meal that I’d prepared
and a decent conversation
about something intellectual,
she told me, just as we were about to Go Upstairs,
that she’d gained some weight since our last time together.
I hadn’t noticed, and told her so,
adding that what had always attracted me was her self,
her person-who-she-is,
and that I didn’t give a shit about superficialities like weight.
I was sincere about that.
I don’t know if she believed me.
I don’t even know if she was paying attention.
Some time later,
when we were Upstairs
and I was massaging and fondling
her naked body,
I noticed that my hands could grab a wee bit more
of the flesh on her sides and back and midsection
than before.
The sensuality of the experience wasn’t better
or worse
than before –
just different.
Love Is All
She told me she loved me,
and acted as if
that had some
mutually understood meaning
for a few months
until she went off her meds.
Later, as the relationship
became increasingly thin,
she told me that she loved me still,
but only as an afterthought – a bone to a dog
who was oh-so-much trouble,
far too much trouble to care for.
Later still she told me that she had loved me,
back in the day.
I don’t know now what she meant by love
at any of these times.
I don’t think, at any rate,
that how I myself felt,
what my emotions were –
toward her, toward things in general –
when I was massaging
her naked body and head,
or when I was sitting by myself
with only grog for company,
was something she considered to be
at all interesting to her, personally.
Painful Mismatch
If she hadn’t been committed
to maintaining close contact
over the long term
she shouldn’t have arranged
for me to bond with her boys –
seven-year-old fraternal twins –
at a time in my life when children filled a void.
Actually, there’s plenty of things
that she shouldn’t have done,
and plenty of things that I shouldn’t have done,
but I know that I always did my best
to do the right things.
My best, obviously,
wasn’t good enough
and never would have been,
our psychological profiles
and needs
and disabilities
being so badly mismatched.
Postmortem
I was fool enough
to believe that
all those soulful things
she said to me
were true –
or at least an honest expression
of what she really felt.
I was fool enough
to believe that what she did
to bring me in
meant that she valued
closeness between us –
or at least that she valued
my company.
I was fool enough
to fail to consider
the likely consequences of
her illness
and her medication situation
until it was too late.
Once a fool,
always a fool,
and there’s no fool
like an old one.
Message To My Former Lover
There they were for me to enjoy,
often at first,
and then from time to time –
you and your words,
and the incisive intelligence
that showed so beautifully on your face,
and your attention and affection,
and your luscious tits and your pulsating ass,
and your clitoris and your moans,
and your hugs and your cuddles,
and your sons and their innocence,
and the sense of family that made me feel –
and then they weren’t there any more,
without any real explanation.
I can only guess at what was most likely
to have caused this change,
and I probably guess wrong.
TheHurt
She wrote me,
‘Sorry for thehurt.’
Well, yeah.
Big fucking deal.
What’s another ample dollop of hurt,
after all,
when ladled on top of
a lifetime of hurt,
anyway.
I’ll be dead in a few years at most,
anyway,
and it’ll make no difference then,
anyway.
An Ongoing Project
The first thing that attracted me to my last lover
was her brilliance as a poet.
I, who think little of ‘poetry’,
degenerated into a jelly-kneed groupie.
Of course, she considers herself to be an ‘anti-poet’,
and that what she writes is a challenge
to the poetry mainstream.
Unlike me she reads the poetry mainstream.
Even long after the last time she told me
through her driver’s-side window
that we’d see each other again in two weeks
(but never did),
I still, from time to time,
stalked the facebook page
where she posted her writings.
She knew that I did this,
even though I never formally ‘Liked’ the page.
On a crotch-freezing winter morning
I read one that she’d composed
about the ‘crush’ she’d had before me
(I could identify the subject due to
some references to his situation),
reproaching him for, amongst other things,
not acknowledging their grounds for closeness
(such closeness having been something
she’d often directed me to back off from).
Oh, so that’s the story now, is it?
No skin off my arse.
A few days later she removed that poem.
I considered my not giving a shit one way or the other
to be an encouraging sign.
Not Getting Over It
Martin noticed that I was still kicking myself in the ass
over how things had gone with Carin
and observed that these things always happen with women
and that it was time for me to get over it.
I told him that was impossible,
that I’d never get over her,
just as I’ve never gotten over any of the many relationships
at which I’ve failed over the past half-century or so,
enhancing and scarring my life.
Every one of those failures bothers me still;
Carin, being so recent, just felt the sharpest.
He shook his head and looked away.
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