Words for the Dark, November 28, 2014

In a black and white movie, what looked like a shamrock to me

Was a club to the person holding all the cards

Our house was old from the start

Patching and painting and tearing down and adding on

Telling ourselves the foundation was good though we never looked

Nothing but dirt, with poor drainage

Crumbling in a conflict between … god, who really gives a damn anymore?

All this while I obediently awaited his answers to my life

But in this dream

I looked him straight in the eye

After surveying that big house of cards that looked so damned good

From the outside

And said we can’t keep doing this

We must end this joint tenancy and go

Our separate ways

Because I deserve to live the life I’m still living

The whole of it not your half

He resisted and kept fighting

Waiting for the next time to show the hand

This ghost had dealt from a deck I didn’t know was stacked

In a game I’d never played

Making others believe, when I wasn’t present

That it was all me

Who kept him here and not his fear of leaving having just learned more about love

Because we were the teacher and the student

A duet of audience and solo performer

I understood his fear

He knew no better than I how or why we still shared these lessons much less this space

So he fought to be him and I fought to be me

In a friendlier game, no more high stakes poker until that day when

I told him that he was no longer welcome

I told him I’d be sad, lying without regret - well, some - because

I needed to meet him where he was and use language he understood and this language

One learned from him

Now designed to save my own skin

Made him feel like he could leave a winner

The final hand played

And just like that, he vanished

Exactly like he had all those years ago

I looked down and saw in my hand a royal flush, all hearts

I’d won back my home

Alone in the beautiful company of me

After all, when has being right ever helped a relationship?