Tessa’s Marionette

She doesn’t paint her fingernails like I still do.

Her band aid covered hand slithered across the cheap ink in my arms.

I always wondered why, but back then I was far too thoughtful to ask.

She closed her book and took me for a movie buff and gave me Olivia Gatwood when I was halfway through “Women.”

A little diversity never killed anyone.

Three cheers for agony and hand rolled cigarettes.

I couldn’t get her off of my mind or her cherry red high horse.

She assumed that I was full of myself for trying to do so.

We kissed outside of my apartment that I wasn’t paying for, and my breath probably tasted like thirteen dollar whiskey, but I don’t remember all too well.

She told me she would come back as she walked down the steps.

I tried to make the final kiss last because I know when someone doesn’t really care.

She called me pompous a few weeks later which I fondly recall every now and then.

Her and I never fucked.

When it got warmer I returned her books, and realized her band aids on her fingers were to cover up paper cuts.

Excess of an affectation can be a cruel mistress they said.

I let her paint a dove on my black wall and I loved it.

She told me our paths will cross again.

Now, on this lonely afternoon I sit here and apply a thicker coat of nail polish.

The Liar’s Bench

Her allure was something to either make a man or mar him beyond repair.

All too familiar was all I could think.

To provoke an old friend with habitual tendencies is malicious at best.

An inherent vice is gorgeous in a way isn’t it?

Time hadn’t yet erased the wounds she gave me for my birthday.

I waited too long to warn him that this was the perfect place for us all to descend like we have never before.

Not to say we weren’t quite the trio, however even she wasn’t naive to the inevitability of an ephemeral weekend.

He came back after another evening spent with her and lady white.

He was happy for the time being.

I didn’t know her anymore so I can’t say if I needed the nicotine or not.

Self-imposed exile from the woman he still loves still will never justify how many times she forgot to put the cork back in the bottle.

The weekend told me she was drinking whiskey.

I went home earlier than usual only to return to the liar’s bench.

They gave me a glass of joy in a lowball and I watched the rest of them take dignified sips of their formaldehyde-infused daiquiris.