Tonight I’m just that petty, whiny bitch, mad I’m sad in this hotel room alone,
drinking too much warm white wine to not drown in the silence of my phone.
Looking through the photos I captured of a day without sun or blue sky,
while my skin is still chilled with rain soaked too deep for my towel to dry.
And I’m mad you weren’t there all day holding me close under my umbrella,
charmed by my singing off-key to you that one line I stole from Rihanna.
And that I only had my venti coffee to warm an unclasped hand
with no arm to grasp in a bolt of delight when my jaunt led to an Irish band.
Together would have made this day one of our hallowed walks of fame,
so on my own a night capped with sips from a crinkly plastic cup of shame.

And my wondering if any of our chapters can survive our one bad ending
and is it better or worse to revise the heroic to villainous masquerading?
Can any of your words remain as true, if those were the final of our story,
or do the pages turning ours to a gory tale erase all of the former’s glory?
And then if words of my epilogue can hurt you, even if you never read them;
will you somehow still feel them, even if I never say them?
Can I write them with enough power to etch on your soul their weight
that you’ll carry even if you won’t know why and what to name it?
But if I can wield a pen as pin and this paper a voodoo effigy in your likeness,
where do I mark my ink to spell the pang of an abandoned conscience?

And where I would be if I had just said no to the opera that one October’s day
you came to town packed with patched excuses to darken my office doorway?
Or if I hadn’t left a bag in your room and your hotel bar didn’t have Malbec,
and we hadn’t decided on one last glass or three before we went up to get it?
Or if you hadn’t found nerve to kiss me when parched on the edge of the bed,
and saw an oasis in my eyes that was only a mirage until after you did.
I told myself before it couldn’t happen, which I guess means I knew it would,
I just didn’t how easy it would feel and I was surprised by just how good.
But if nothing else, at least we can keep a secret…
And nothing else. But at least we kept our secret.
But where would I be if we kept to even one of our warm goodbyes,
or renewed promises, a romance was doomed, so we would keep ours light?
Would I have continued with my unlucky run with the love of passing lovers?
Or would my hand be taken by one legally bound to sleep beneath my covers?

But I can’t help but wonder too, where and with who would you be now?
and though a bit pathetic, I claim a shard of your guilt you are not somehow.
For not being the woman you could stay with forever we both believed I’d be,
after I sought so hard to sway you to bet on my love as just as true and deep.
But if I had left you safe in your lie mine was a fleeting fancy of a fickle heart,
would you be set with one you trust for the virtue of being more on your par,
not grieving our time lost to my illusion tipped from a pedestal in shrouds,
after you gave me the benefit of your time, but never without your doubts?

I know there’s no peace to mine in the answers to these questions,
so far down the rabbit holes of all what has and might have beens,
but this cheap wine counters shrewdly that there’s nothing on TV
as intoxicating as what tomorrows might hold for a different you and me.

Like would your doubts have been so chaotic if we weren’t so far in age?
Or your insecurities so catastrophic if so many glances didn’t sneak our way?
And did it make it harder when I’d debate the logic in what you would say,
or is it just who you are to need to don the venerable cloak of a wisened sage?
Would you’ve considered my opinions more and weighed heavier my advice,
if you didn’t view me as only viewing the world thru less experienced eyes?
Would we’ve made more decisions together instead of bending to your will,
or do you know better than every woman, even how they think and feel?

Would I trip in fewer thorny mazes for you pricked by fewer conjured slights,
if I held your hand in the light of all days and you me in the dark of all nights?
Would you find fuel in a map showing two paths merged past one final bump,
or still put invisible hurdles in mine and then be hurt when I didn’t jump?
And would we be happy now if I beat the waves to stake your new town ours?
And did distance cover our cracks for longer or weave fear into fatal flaws?
Fear our leap would prove a stumble of faith, and maybe even fear we’d fly.
But tho grounded apart, that we were amid the lucky, I was too aware to cry,
so for once I didn’t just want you, I needed you to step up as I spiralled down.
My soul had moved early to our light to only get farther as curves unwound,
and to imbibe the poisons at work was the price to some day follow it home,
but you saw my drained vessel as eroding want of my anchoring cornerstone.
I dug ever deeper reserves as you couldn’t see there was more to me than you,
but however many breaths I found to ease you, only one more would ever do.
I hadn’t yet even stood again after tripping in angst over 2 lumps in my road.
in a time the one my spirit most reached for wasn’t mine to hold it afloat;
or yet rose from ashes to air after brutally won battles to rerail our track,
so what if you took my waning sword in turn, not twist it to stab my back?

Would I be staring at a ring on my finger instead of it’s chipped fresh polish,
amused you wanted red to be our shade of love so how so perfectly symbolic.
It seems I overpoored me wine that fans melodramatic flickers in my mind,
burning boldly to bad poetry any damn thing it can pass as a passable rhyme.
But easier feeling tangled feelings in thinking how to untangle them to verse,
and we were always at our best in hotels, so that’s why tonight’s my worst.

But the mirror mocks me still more as it stirs your words on self-reflection,
when you didn’t see the need for it when you were so deft at mis-deflection.
After I tired of atoning for both our sins, learned your patterns and prepared
to tie our flaws to mine but in grace ask you to own some and some as shared.
And held firm even when clear our heels were digging our ground into grave
in the close of a worn escape your destruction had only my damage to blame.
I saw the slow implosion of a man flailing for outs he always slipped by on;
view a vow broken as made to ponder it, a discussion now had, over, and won.

Do you recall when I feared your words on Skype were your veiled goodbye,
how mad you feigned I’d think, after 5 years, you might be that spineless guy?
Because I do that you then unveiled it through a shared Google doc instead;
but you won’t know I watched you slowly spell out our demise in your head.
That the only insight you gleaned was you felt discomfort in looking inside;
you didn’t find you had talent for it and didn’t see why you should have to try.
Or to even say a simple just sorry that might accept flaw in any you say or do;
or ever to have to have answers for questions of one less seasoned than you.
In fairness, the last bit is purely my speculation tho also an educated guess,
as your cowardice manifested shields of pretension in solo games of chess.
Til you stole our final act in role of humbled martyr to an ego too proud for me,
or anyone, but bet you wallowed in that routine for the shorter half of a week.

But of any words I would have our feral winds carry to whisper in your ears,
it’s these of yours haunt me for all you put me through to appease your fears.
And every time I hurt your feelings when you were in a feeling hurt mood,
how you’d find I double-crossed them took the genius of a determined brood.
Made me perform over and again my penance til kept beat with a secret tune,
still, I’d tap tired your fucking dance as your sun still cast my harvest moon.
I knew I just had to tread the tidal storm until your light lit for my face again,
tho your eyes’d then wary in wonder of why now my shine shone a bit dim.

I know I’ve written verses only to say nothing new in recycled rhyme
in seeking release by vigilante conviction in the closed trials of my mind.
But in truth, I’m mad only at fate for twisting your free will to say goodbye;
and decisions made by your heart never really even need a reason why.
But you could’ve left for 50 good ones so there’s now 1 etched I’m glad you did
as your ill-chosen taunts in bald injustice all work done on myself to give.
And struck the lone match to torch my fiery scripture to scorching testimony
instead of to glowing odes to my forever affectionately wistful memory.
And light my mind’s dark corners with a verdict so starkly black and white,
instead of still reflections on what if I could’ve done more right.
So so be it we had to come to end, but with so many ways you could’ve gone,
it stuns you slashed the canvas of a masterpiece our past could’ve still drawn.

The wine will run dry tonight, but I’ll still feel that my bed is cold,
and I might regret by morning over-sharing this story now well overtold;
decrypting lines before written in more clever-to-only-me turns of phrase.
Or maybe I won’t til the day my mind clears the fog of this post-mortem haze,
and believes the truth I never had who I wanted or what I thought we shared,
and I’ve missed only the figment of my hopes fueled by a distant almost there.
And if I hadn’t, I’d be here wondering what if I had said yes that October’s day
to the man I feared could be all I ever wanted, even if not a bit closer in age.
So alls well that ends wells to end without casts of doubt over untaken paths,
even if led into exile from the ivied cobblestoned eden slipped from my grasp.