Mutual Exclusivity?

A couple weekends ago I had two conversations in one day about how I cannot lend books out anymore because I break up with people and then never get them back. Per usual, that is about as much autobiography that is in this piece. And a gal in my class offered the 'constructive criticism' that this is more on an angry rant than a poem and she's tired of victim poems like this and a previous one we workshopped. Needless to say, I took that personally. She's a great writer and someone whose readings of poems I admire for her sharpness, and I don't mind when people don't like my work, but I do expect a college in a classroom to be more constructive than that.




Dear Sometime Lover,

I dreamt I wrote you a letter.
This isn't it. I would like my books
back. I would like the purple hair tie
you pulled from my pink-dyed pony
tail. Always pulling my hair. It is
probably in the console space between
the front and back seats, where all
replaceable goods gather until they
can seep into the frame and fuck with
the axle. You can keep the strands
as long as they are not braided,
knotted, closed in a hollowed pocket
watch you keep close to your thigh,
hidden beneath the front pleats of
your khakis. You are too handsome
for those trousers. My hair is black
again. Cropped close to my skull
because when you strung your fingers
through the foot of dehydrated curls,
when you told me I was beautiful, it
sounded like trains' brakes on rusted
steel rails, brakes pulled too late to
do anything but prolong the last words
a new mother in an old car stalled on
the rotting wooden ties could speak
to her baby, and I never wanted to be
thought beautiful again. Perhaps it
would be best if you vacuumed your
car, swept your apartment, and sent
all the dust and fibers in a plastic bag
along with my books. You know I wrote
notes in the margins. I want my notes
back. And all the cells I sloughed off
just to be near you. All the sacrifices
you took unceremoniously from my skin
beneath your nails, they are mine. You
said you were afraid to break me, but
I never bled, never bruised, never told
you no. My bones are steel. Don't you
remember how many half-gallons of
vitamin D milk you brought over that
month I couldn't leave the apartment
because there were men with radios
in their mouths running around the
building waiting to shove wires and
receptors in my gums? You didn't have
to lie. Sometimes I wonder if you were
beginning to break yourself. But I don't
know now. You didn't have to lie. I was
one of the first to know you didn't give
a shit about me. I really didn't mind.
You taught me what most girls learn
young, that sex is love and I only need
a loose tongue and loose hips. Why did
it take me so long? I have loved much
since you left, so how can I be anything
but grateful for your coming and going?
Beautiful doesn't hurt so much because
now I know it is transitory, because now
I know it means I am idyllic and not an
archaic idol. There is a new one who is
trying to break the rules. He wants to
hold my hand in public. He took me to
dinner with his grandmother and didn't
seem to mind when I told her the chicken
was fucking good. It was fucking good.
It scares me and I miss you and maybe
if you could drop my books off we could
talk and you know I don't mean that, but
he's got me back on the olanzapine and
I'm starting to feel again and I miss the
numbness of your breath, miss being
left and I suppose I mean to say I
somehow love you how I loved before
I knew what love really was. I suppose
I mean to say I love you and it is likely
written in the margins of the pages that
if you brought back we could tear out
and tape the floor and walk all over and
remind us why words are overrated and
feelings are for suckers too afraid to
sleep for six months and break their
bones while they dream.