Dear Ex Lover

Writer’s Note: I had a lover who I thought was the best thing ever that happened to me. Turns out he wasn’t. All through the five months we were together, he had a “significant other”, and I was just the side chick/dude. It hurt when I found out, and the verse below is the expression of my pain.

*

Dear Ex Lover,

I promise I’ll stop chasing your memory in my dreams.

I’ll stop bringing your name up

Over cups of teas, toast, and loneliness

I will marry a man

And I will lay my heart on his chest

Like red roses on Mahogany caskets

And we shall have a daughter and she’ll have eyes that’ll remind me

That God still believes in second chances.

And if she ever decided to love a woman, I will rub bravery down her spine.

I will be reminded of all the times that we loved

Like there were expiration dates tattooed on our inner thighs.

If she ever comes home with eyelids like cracking Levis and bruised kneecaps

And a heart filled with question marks

I will hold her like my mother never held me

I will clasp her face in my palms like the New Testament on Judgement Day

I will tell her that love is the passion that allows you to do the right thing

And that no woman can play coaster to a half empty heart.

And if she ever feels as if she is alone

As if she is a hand-me-down pulled out of the depths of daddy’s closet

I’ll remember you and tell her that I know

That I know what it’s like to want someone to remember you

That some men are as foul as expired wares in produce aisles

That apologies are like oxygen masks on a hijacked plane

I’ll tell her to never regret loving in permanent ink

That scars only give you stretch marks, something to gossip about

That hearts and stop signs are fraternal twins,

Lost in open roads and hollow chests

If my daughter’s mirror ever looks unfamiliar

And she’s too embarrassed to run into daddy’s arms

I’ll pray that she has friends with hearts filled with thousands of fire flies

Friends who are not too cool to pray with her

Who will tell her to stop looking for the light at the end of the tunnel

And find God in the darkness

If my daughter ever walks into the house like shattering glass

I’ll tell her about you.

I’ll tell her that we hurt like c-sections birthing dead babies

That we cried together, and we prayed together, and we laughed

Like our smiles were the only ones that mattered in this world.

That we hurt like men who loved men, who loved people that did not love us.

Dear Ex Lover

I hope my daughter never knows what a goodbye kiss feels like

I hope she never knows what “I’ll see you later” really means.

I hope she never memorizes the dial-tone of a last conversation

Because a broken heart feels like poisoned butterflies

Taking their last flutters in the pit of your stomach

Dear Ex Lover

I hope my daughter never bears her soul in pain via a blog

Knowing that the hands her lover will use to scroll and read her poem

Are the same hands that will never hold her again.

Written by Vhar