A Summons for another lost lover
One day the girl you've been summoning,
punishing for all your ex's mistakes will arrive - all good girl gone bad, apocalyptic, cherry bomb, dark horse like-
mounted on the back of all your broken promises,
riding through the mist of your sold dreams
she will arrive uninvited and unannounced,
gate-crashing
pulling a manicured stiletto shaped middle finger
to the respectability politics that ruled your relationship.
Oh she will cum..
She will come armed singing war songs of SZA and 6 inch-heels.
Completely unapologetic - unrecognizeable in that way to you.
All black leather outfit tight-fitting like a glove.
Like the glove you should have used that night that you hate talking about
you know- the one you can't quite make eye contact about.
The night you realized that making her feel crazy was easier than telling the truth.
Unable to make eye contact,
you now miss the way she used to be able to read your face - fluent in all your facial expressions she was... once.
Once she used to scour your face for any evidence that you actually loved her.
And now...
Well now in all black she no longer makes eye contact with you -
she's too focused,
smiling with no fear of the future
she's got tunnel vision.
And while she tramples upon all of your half-hearted 'I'm sorry's' in combat boots,
she unthinkingly made eye contact, but she wasn't looking at you anymore,
she was looking through you or rather she was enthralled with her reflection in your iris
completely ignoring and/or unaware of your inability to recognize the girl that now stands before you.
Clad permanently in all black, the remenants of the girl you lost lies mourned beneath the surface - undiscovered or rather inconceivable to you but then again everything about her was always beyond you.
It's the butterfly effect,
propelled by LA Flame into the club you see her spilling champagne on the dance floor,
And oh
Father God,
Father God she's stopped praying.
She cocooned herself in the last of who she was when she saw you with someone new.
Cocooned hoping that when she blossomed you'd choke -
much like she does when she rolls with laughter at your "I miss you" texts,
4 months later,
you find yourself choking at some of her snap stories - so careless
but maybe she's just learned the love language of recklessness that you taught her.
She choked when she got your text in the club that night but then again
maybe the choker she was wearing was just too tight.
No mind, no matter.
No mind is given to you - you afterthought of heartbreak you.
No mind, no matter
It's no longer mind over matter this side of town,
it's cardi B and condoms littered on the floor like conffetti -
she's taken to celebrating, the birth of the new kind of butterfly that she's become. Carried by the winds of change,
she's now firmly perched in the flower of " The one that got away",
sucking the life out of that missed opportunity
with each instagram post and instavideo watched on repeat.
Perched in that flower you cannot help but
wonder where the good girl you neglected went.
Oh no, this girl cruzes around passenger side - seated comfortably in the temporal nature of all her relationships,
in and out - that's the most you'll get from her.
You'll be Alice; fall into a wonderland that looks like love
only to realize that her love has run dry - the ocean that was her
has turned to something mimicking the red sea - too salty for you to step into.
You'll realize a little too late that the all consuming ocean that was once
her has run dry,
in waves she washed over you,
and in waves she has run dry.
And it's when you have that realization that
you'll be exiled - excommunicated out of her life.
Another ex.
It's onto the next because she never loved you anyway -
at least that's what she'll tell herself.
That's what you'll tell yourself.
II
You see...
That's your problem you poor boy,
you've been chasing a ghost;
tormented by the glimpse of a loving ghost you caught between your hands
one night when you convinced her to stay and found out more than you bargained for,
found out what she was like before 'him',
the reason you feel her flinch beneath your finger tips whenever you talk about the "L" word,
unsure of how that word became more of a curse word than all the other ones she throws around more freely than all the girls you have ever known combined...
'him'...
she spoke his name and that name felt like a curse word to you,
an insult to all that you've been trying to establish with her because the walls around her heart have his name inscribed on every well-fortified brick.
You almost gave up the ghost...
Almost.
But one night - not that night,
but one night,
one night you found yourself drowning in the waves of confusion you felt looking into her eyes and seeing the ghost of a girl who once loved too much.
Waves so violent and volitile you were hurtled out onto the island of loneliness that she'd been occupying for months before you met.
The Welcome sign on the island read
" Welcome to the Island of Self-Preservation-
the lifestyle of safety is a constant celebration".
Walking on to the mainlaind of her loneliness you began to make sense of the erraticness of your relationship,
your heart began to decipher the method to her madness of purposefully ignoring your calls and promptly answering your whatsapps .
Your barefeet crunched loudly on a land littered with burnt matches.
See- she'd always loved to play with fire and the men before you had allowed her
on impulse
'for the sake of love'
knowing danm-well it would translate to abandonment
to strike a match to the temple of all of who she was,
one too many times she had set herself alight.
Set herself on fire to keep the fire of their love going,
to keep their love going during the winter named "Why wasn't I good enough?"
Not understanding until the Winter passed that she was a fire-breathing symphony called the sun and that just because it was Winter
doesn't mean she wasn't in full effect.
But that last time...
The last time...
The last time - the blaze of disappointment left her in ruins, pure rubble.
And it is there where you wade poor boy,
wondering through the forest of newly planted insecurities.
Alien plants so foreign to you and yet so powerful that they tear the flesh of your palms open on the occassions she's let you close enough to try pull them out.
It was one drunken night when she felt you trying to tend to the wild rain forest of insecurity that had begun to eclipse much of who she was that she realized how foreign your tenderness felt.
Drowning in confusion somehow she couldn't understand how something so sweet,
someone so genuine feels like toying with matches again
and she had been burnt one too many times.
Charred really.
You have heard the screams of who she used to be when her gaurd falls and
the ghost reappears greeting you with tenderness and rare "I miss you" texts.
In the last blaze, of her last love, she was consumed entirely.
You can see it there, in her unshed tears, the way that she choked on disintegrated dreams of forever when the temple that she is
was set alight for the nth time
by a bored pyromaniac.
You hear how she screamed in that blaze in the way she won't let you stay over for too long, the way she doesn't talk about her family,
the way she doesn't talk at all every-time you try love her.
You hear the jagged cry in the way she sings "Don't hurt yourself" with a tightly controlled passion in long car rides,
somehow...
you know how that cry must have echoed into the sky of "another one"
and that that was when she moved onto an island.
Safer.
Sole occupant.
No dreams to toy with of forever.
Just visitors.
And you visited one Sunday, when she didn't have the energy for anything besides sweat pants and listening to Jhene Aiko on loop.
You visited her in her cocoon.
Oh the butterfly that she is, you try touch her, her soul
but then again butterflies can't fly when the dust is wiped from their wings
and so you sit,
itching to wipe the dust of the last blaze off her otherwise colourful wings.
There in the cacoon of just you two and the murmers of "can't let the summer pass" by party next door, waiting for her to chose you, waiting for her to come your way.
Sometimes the cacoon is triggering to you too,
sometimes when she whispers the harrowing recollection of the last blaze,
there in that tiny bed you become trapped in a disillusionment of your own making,
the memory of your own deception with ex's you no longer talk about haunting you.
Sometimes the cacoon is triggerring to you too,
an archeologist in uncovering the hurts that she has healed by putting the band-aid of time over bulletholes.
Sometimes you will need to read the instructions on her face that say "give me space"
You will need to read the instructions which read "caution when hot" when you've pushed her too far and she begins to take flight,
on two legs practically running out your apartment.
You will need to understand that the instructions
weren't just talking about how she looks.
"Caution- When hot!"
They were talking about the fact that sometimes she will incinerate you.
Some days you will be warmed by the incessant warmth of her gardener-like self
that your love and long tedious conversations have resurrected
using the tools of her past experience -
laboring along the landscape of your relationship.
And some days those same tools will be thrown, hurtled in your direction,
as she downs tools - tired of working.
Some days you will encounter a fire-breathing dragon that bends matter and time to her liking like a black smith-
and she will roar at you to return to the kitchen of your domestic understanding of a women if you cannot handle the heat.
And some days you will stare at her in awe- as if looking into the sun itself,
her beauty will blind you
and some days gobsmacked you will not understand how one womxn can inhale and exhale oxygen
completely unaware that she is yet again,
a fire
ablaze
running rampant through your life.
A smile so golden that the sun envies the way she lights up a room.
III
This girl.
This island.
This lion.
This liquid champagne lover.
This dragon that you fell in love with will melt all the hardened parts of your heart.
This she-devil will mezmerize you - unremorseful
unapologetic that somewhere along the way of building a home on her island -
she captured the state of your soul.
Oh this inexplicable force of nature,
This IAMDDB listening,
Pussy Riot-loving,
Occasional flaming bitch of a women was just never basic enough for you was she?
That's what the eviction letter read as you were exiled off her island,
the sound of Cardi B ringing in your ears because you got too comfortable.
The sound of demolition as she tore your house down,
The absence of her warmth has left you a fragile flower wilting in the sun of another women who somehow just isn't as hot as you had imagined -
had convinced yourself that she would be,
oh you fickle boy enamoured by the basic normality of the girl you chose over her,
overwhelmed by the spectacular.
Oh you shallow running river you.
Oh you poor passer by.
How she will haunt you.
How she will haunt you.
How she will haunt you...
Because you caught a ghost and got bored the moment it began to materialize.
Because you couldn't understand emotional labor
and the fact that she would never let you work on her like a pet project
that your presence on her island was by her design
that she made you climb her walls because she loves elevating people;
knew you were capable of reaching great heights.
And oh the bullet holes that you "discovered" were healed long before you arrived because she is well aware of the fact that she could never leave her healing process up to a man because you cannot spell "disappointment" without men.
And you disappointed her,
what could be more disappointing than a man thinking that he would be able to find even half of her in someone else?
What could be more dissapointing than spending months learning to speak her love language only to meet someone new and think that her language would be less foreign to you and fall more sweetly upon your tongue?
What could be more dissapointing than thinking that a women like that was average?
What could be more dissapointing than taking the easy way out?
Out of love.
Out of body.
Out of sorts.
Out of bounds.
Oh poor boy, so out of bounds are your assumptions that she won't bounce back,
as if the eco-system on her island ever needed you to function?
Oh poor boy,
so out of bounds are your assumptions that
a women who is the sun,
a fire island
a man made forest
and a butterfly needs you to feel anything at all?