for when the time came we clinked glasses and smiled bashfully,
stringing along strained hopefuls with anxious smiles;
girls with tender tempers make the worst heartbreakers.
and when the time comes there will be a a drum beat for our feet,
pounce pounce march until it’s down down to the art:
the art of memorizing all of your mistakes and
filtering the ocean water for its salt;
it’s gotta count for something poetic when i rub it into your hurts.
because when the time came we glossed the lips that hid our sharpened teeth
and tucked the tell-tail into our fashionable high-waist belts;
devilish little creatures with high cheekbones and searching kisses.
I hid my arched brows with questions when really it’s the maneater in me;
every girlish grin hides the enraged howl of hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-woman
and when the time came you were a gentleman fancying a Nancy,
Positive that Patricia would be the one.
Lydia gave you chlamydia and
to BreAnn you were one of three men:
Not so heroic of a musketeer when casting aside all your assumptions,
the tremble is woven into your words:
like tonight when nuances came onto each other like middle-aged divorcees in shadowy corners of the bar;
old dogs learn new tricks like nesting in new laps when the familiar and warm grows alone and flailing.
you finally realize that all in all end to end,
the secrets in the silence answer all the questions we dare not ask:
humans are such a rowdy set of fools with bruises from here to here for heartaches,
bashful broads and don’t-be-a-hero-timmy’s,
we are the incapacitated lovers lying down in sun soaked fields looking for answers somewhere above and behind the curl in her lash,
we are the forewarned forsaken who took caution and threw it to the wind when wound down to a tight spiral of suspicion and jealousy.
we are the ones who saw the hurt coming from miles away and held ground just for the sweet burn of the rope nudged into a tight knot around your wrists and to the track:
self-sacrifice makes me attractive because it makes me look devoted.
self-sacrifice makes me special because it makes me look enraptured:
the rapture is yet to come with stormy fires and armageddon and jesus with arms wide open:
there is no rapture in the rupture when we break,
we the reckless we the loved we the rejected:
there is no rapture in the rupture when we break.
Garbanzo Bae 