I.
She is talking about her sheets.
Her bright green, personality-driven sheets now residing
in a dumpster halfway to the back of her mind.
Her new sheets are white, she says.
II.
Tears are dripping off my chin, mixing with wax
running down my fingers, flame
clutched in hand. If I speak,
it won’t be eloquent and that used to matter to me
more than it should. In any case,
the prompt is always
the same. I am here because.
Because it’s been a year and a half so maybe, just maybe, it’s time
to forgive myself for believing
that it was something inherent about me—and still is, but I would
fight today. I was told you feel guilt over events that happened in the past if you fear you might do it in the future. If you tell someone, it’s because you aren’t the same person you were—
or because you need someone else to hold it with you.
Later, when you look through me,
I will remind myself of this.
III.
The next time I hear “I don’t want to hurt—”
with breath still dragging shallow, spine arched,
hand trailing bare stomach I will laugh and then
leave, eviscerating you a better pastime than what I’ve done
to myself.
The best thing I can say is that you were the last part
of the part of my history that went up in smoke
on a Thursday night.
I know. I was the one to light it.