I play magic the gathering the way business men play golf
The game confuses me, even frustrates me
But grade school beat me up, and when the only ones who had been there with first aid smiles and handgun comebacks followed me to college, they played magic the gathering
You found them in our community college cafeteria.
I was away leading a Bible study,
I came back the next day, and looked at you like my God did not need my eyes
I later asked, half as a strange pick up line half as a precaution, “has anyone accused you of being a narcissist?”
You told me you were afraid not
I told you you were so charming I wanted to make sure it was genuine
you liked that I thought you were charming, and didn’t mind that I called you a narcissist
Soon we talked about who god was and why you don’t believe
the butterfly wings echoed in my church cathedral that Sunday
I thought, “This will be a problem.”
What you called blind faith, was
I used to tell anyone who would listen that we are broken and only Jesus can save us, in the space of this community college cafeteria
Turns out there is no God, the life I built around him crumbled
All except the table in our community college cafeteria, where I now bought creatures with islands
tried to figure out what proliferate meant
Ate french fries off the floor
And fell in love with you.
We built castles of memories
every second a note in my brain.
The way you looked at me from the driver’s seat like the road did not need your eyes
The way you giggled at the police officers who pulled us over, like our getaway was the coolest thing that ever happened to you
The way you kissed me, nervous like my lips were atom bombs
Were all bullets on the list of things I liked about you
We spent late nights together
At pool halls, parking lots, and grocery stores
We ran around, together a clumsy hurricane
We called ourselves a nuisance, and we were
Sometimes until 2am, with work tomorrow, not ready to leave
Until one day you told me you were ready to leave.
I think of the men who lay alone in their bed and think of what could have been if I still loved them.
I walked away, exchanged each of them for a new piece of myself, and hollowed out in them the size of the complete self I made
Today I am smaller than the size of what I cut out of them
I think of how they would long to be you,
Because the emptiness in me fits the size of you
Your smile when you saw me peep from under my half open garage to see you there
Your laugh, the way it sounds like you’ve been holding it in
How you only called me babe to mock the people who were serious
How you couldn’t stand still when we hugged,
How we disagreed on peanut butter but never with each other.
Or maybe they would long to be you because you do not think of me when you lay your head to rest anymore
Because I am your past.
I am your past,
But you are my now.
I grieve you, you grieve the time you wasted on me
The mistakes I made made me a mistake you made
How my mistakes would long to be my one that got away
I wonder if you miss me
Or if you forgot about me for long enough to forget why you once did
I wonder if you miss telling me one more time what proliferate means,
If you miss holding me until I fall asleep,
If you miss late nights in grocery stores…
I am not ready to leave.
I have work tomorrow, and every day
Places to go, things to see
But I am not ready
I let you be my fullness, and now you are gone
I looked at you like I did not need my own eyes
Though if feels now like I can’t,
I will use my own eyes again.
I will lock the doors to the castles made of our memories
I will lay flowers at the doorstep
And I will say goodbye.
Poetry
“I play magic the gathering the way business men play golf” – what a great first line!!