When I didn’t love him, he locked the keys in his car
so I’d have to keep giving him rides to work.
When I didn’t love him, he bought himself dinner
for seven nights a week and pretended that the empty chair
sitting across from him was me.
My mother always taught me to never place blame on
the losing party, to always rub honey into wounds instead
of salt, but whenever I caught him watching me with other men,
I wanted to board the nearest bus and drive as far away
as I could from his eyes. When I didn’t love him,
he started to believe an aquarium was a sadder version
of the ocean and tried to drown himself at sea.
When I didn’t love him, he loved me so much
that his desire acted as a lifejacket and prevented him
from going under. I was the year about to turn over
into the equinox, the fingerprints on the wineglass,
the fog so thick even fireflies lost their way,
the frequency of dogs who could hear a revenge story
from a mile away. I cracked his heart like a glow-stick,
filled his mouth with nothing but my name.
In the end, he had to resort to watching my window
at 3 AM in hopes that it would suddenly light up
and he could imagine me behind the curtains,
undressing, clothes falling to the floor like skim milk.
That was the closest he would ever get to me.