My best friend says I talk in my sleep and all I say over and over again
is how could you how could you. I’m getting used to the taste
of that question sitting on my tongue with my morning coffee.
I’m putting on lipstick just to feel pretty. I’m lying to my shrink
because he’ll ask me how it feels and I’ll throw up in his office
or collapse on the floor. In this place, there is wine before bedtime
In my dreams, you break my heart quietly. It is less like snapping a bone
in half and more like a hairline fracture, spreading slowly
each time I take a step. I know people say the end is the end
no matter how it comes but the way it came for us makes me wonder.
Last week, a fortuneteller looked into my coffee cup
and told me to forget about you. I wanted to tell her my fingertips are spread wide
trying to pull all the anger out of my chest. I wanted to tell her
I never learned how to forget. I’m talking in my sleep
and all I am saying over and over again is how could you.