The Trouble with Bonding

My fractures run deep

with jagged curves back in time

misaligned by variances between

what was and what should’ve been.

 

I pretended

to be whole

again and again,

blending my façade

with her charade,

becoming a beautiful lie

that died

the moment we tried

rocky weather together

whenever and wherever

our rhyme got sloppy and

disjointed.

 

We pointed out each other’s flaws

and clawed ourselves apart. My heart

mistook love for a pleasure found

oozing pillow-talk

into the next girl’s

midnight bedsheets;

repeatedly pressed this error

into her replacement’s bed too,

but she fled my good intentions

just as I was finding leverage

to press solid meaning into her…

into her…

 

Are these mildly lewd sex metaphors

doing anything for you? Because

I could probably say plainly that

 

I had mostly good sex

with mostly good women

for mostly bad reasons

 

not for love, pleasure,

not even for affection

mostly, a self-deception

 

as I mostly engaged in the self-delusion

that I loved them

or that I loved myself, when

 

I was clearly too broken to do either,

 

but I suppose it’s better that I couch it

in some wrecked flower and

tangled bedsheet nonsense.

 

I’m wrecking the rhythm of this poem.

I apologize. Now, where was I?

 

Into her wake,

serene surface broken

by her rippling,

departing waves

I wandered,

my fractures,

deep with jagged

curves back in time

misaligned

by variances between

what was her own brokenness and

what should’ve been

her pristine perfection that

should’ve saved us both

but didn’t.

 

Looking back, I know now that her imperfections

were perfectly wondrous and uniquely lovely.

But it took another woman with her own unique

deep, jagged, fractures curving into my own

that helped me appreciate my own failings

from wondrous newly tacked angles.

 

This poem is uneven

and not as pretty

as I had hoped it would be.

 

But it is pure gold

where it needs to be.

***

Written for Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Kintsugi: Art of Mending, Posted by Sumana Roy.