i don't think i was ever real to you.
i guess sometimes it probably felt real. i know you liked me when i was small and dangly, a ring on your hand. you liked me when i was dazzling and easy and jovial; you liked the skimmed perfection of me. you liked that i could comfort you, that i listened without hesitation, that i held you while you slept. you liked me sitting doglike at your palm, panting and happy.
but i was already rabid and hurting and raw when you found me. i think some part of my big ugly neediness ruined your opinion of me. when i was bad - and so often i was doing badly - it was heinous to you. it stole from you. the endless desires i had, dripping off of me onto the floor. staining everything.
my mom says the problem is that i made it too easy for you. i loved you too much, poured so much into your cup that the rest just passed right on out and through. i don't want to believe her. i want to believe that the right kind of love is never "too much." i think you'd probably tell me the reverse is true anyway - something about me just wasn't enough.
sometimes i think about the book i was writing for you. 236 pages, neat and tidy. two hundred and thirty-six; twenty-two of which i almost gave you that morning. just to say the right thing. just to get you to understand - good lord, i know i'm not good enough, but can't you see i'm fucking trying?
doglike again. in all those pages, all i did was sing your praises. i wrote about you with devotion. i wrote about you with a rainbow in my heart, a sunbeam. a whipped creature gnawing her own wrist off. how fucking pathetic to say i genuinely believed.
three weeks ago you told me you'd finally - finally! - written me a song. it was about how sad you'd be once we eventually broke up. the epitaph of something you killed, and you delivered it so calmly.
i don't think i meant anything to you, is all. i don't know how to write about that. i think you just used me. who can blame you, i guess.
i know i made it easy.
