It’s not alright and it hasn’t been alright, not since you yelled at me over flowers, but the flowers weren’t really the issue.
I watched her break and bend, her ankles, they were crushed, her knees buckled in.
I watched her break and bend, her ankles, they were crushed, her knees buckled in.
And I wondered what man could do that until one day I looked out, and the 10 karat necklace flew out of my hand, into Chris Greene Lake.
The emerald of the stone matched the deep green of the water, and I couldn’t watch it float down. The sun hit the rippling surface where I tossed it with such intensity that I thought maybe it didn’t want me to watch. What does that mean?
I guess you meant it when you said over and over that you’d replace me with someone younger by my next birthday, I just didn’t think she’d be fresh out of high school gym class and I’d be writing away on law school applications.
I wonder what happened to my pink fishing bait in your tackle bag, if she uses it now, and I wonder if you compare my poor line throws to hers—you were always the one to never look at your own. I had to think through pushing the line down with my pointer finger (maybe it was my thumb), and I concentrated on letting the weight of the bait go around my shoulder and into the air, arced well enough to land where I wanted it to (or, at least I said that’s where I wanted it to go). It’s February first, not even fishing season yet, but I sometimes still dream about the boat ride in mid-Summer—the one where I was trying so hard to make you happy I nearly burst under the heat of the sun. Everything was compounding, intensifying, breaking. But that line throw, right?
