Before

Red Tulip

A single red tulip
Beckoning me from plastic shelves
Bargained with me for my future
So I shelved out the cash.
Words dripped from my quill like fire
The streams resembled tears I had offered
In so many places
Unnoticed by you.
Arriving at the tower of Tales —
In a garden of Great
I met you at the gate.
Unchanged by your reaction,
Encouraged that you took the card
I hurried to take my seat like the Greeks
Unnerved by the bottle of bubbly apparent for the celebration I would take no part in —
So I stole my friend in the rain
And took a blue train home.
Only months later would I find strength to leave
When I found that card
Halved in your box
The writing now hidden
And the boy smiling forward, sharing the flower
You intended
Not for me.

The Yank

Your preoccupation with my weight was popular,
I played into your
Dirty American tabloid —
You sold me on it.
I begged you for more
Like a junkie —
Hunger consumed me all day.
Your diatribe, so succinct and refined
I felt like the muse of your fairy tale.
Perfection
In a fabled land constructed by you
Is futile.
Still I wore your clothes
Your hair —
Your voice,
Your smell.
I even wrote your music for you —
And lost the only thing that made me unique
Myself.

The Jacket

The lies you told fell far from my heart
I used to see them sitting in my lap, begging their way back in.
And then your words
They came creeping back into the pockets of my green corduroy jacket
Always the green one —
Your favourite.
Like that morning after the terrible fight we had had
Your little heart drawn on parchment with an arrow piercing through
Some would call that love
I only saw the wound it left —
How carefully you placed the spear just to puncture the appropriate part of me.
Those notes kept reappearing
Day after day
Years after you had exited my life
After I had exiled myself from yours.
I gave you your city
And came crawling back to mine.
I finally had to give away the jacket,
The presence of parchment in pockets had become unbearable —
Not only had you branded my heart
I found it hard to function when my clothes were victims too.
My triumphant return years later took you by surprise
By then you had public opinion in your favour
You had spent my absent years well;
Your gifted marketing campaign.
You tried to post your notes to me
Not realizing what I had done
The jacket was gone
And I had my life back.