I just wanted to know how she could hate me so much when all I ever wanted was to hold her like a magician in the inky nights of a January, unforgettable. I wasn’t a sweet reliable machine, but a broken mess like cigarette filters turned over in cans outside of courtrooms.

“I loved you, you know?” She said this in between sips of hot chocolate at a Starbucks across town, I walked through fifteen blocks to see her kick me in the face with those perfect Pointe toes. I loved her, more than any neo-theologian loved their self-made God, more than candy on Halloween and I just wanted to figure out how such a delicate flower could wield teeth like barbed-wire fences at Auschwitz, where snagging skin was the only love making available.

Nothing really happened so I told her that I hoped she had a good life, sorry things didn’t work, and drive safe. That last part was a lie, I wanted her to wreck into a train or something because I hated her for lying. I took her engagement ring back, All 900 dollars of it, and bought a mandolin, some books by Kerouac, and a bottle of rye whiskey that’s still unopened in the freezer. The end of the day went fine. I learned good poetry leads to bad breakups and sometimes you can’t give enough heart to someone with a concrete body.