“Something must be wrong. You give me emotional artifacts that can find no purchase.”

You were never going to stick. You just weren’t one of those. You were a temporary salve for me: a way to hastily dress a wound so as not to be bothered by it. You were cold and hungry on the side of the road. I was a blanket; a hot meal. For a time, it was sustenance. It would do. And it did. Until it didn’t.

There are so many ways to hide. We can thrust ourselves headlong into certain disaster. It’s a chilling prospect, the inevitability of failure. How big can we make this explosion? How much will you shift what’s inside of me? Will I think of you, years from now, when I hear that song, when I taste that dish? Will you surface occasionally, like a sour stomach or a tension headache?

Your love was so quick and easy. It was almost dirty in its nonchalance. Your proclamations were the cream puff of language: golden and inviting on the surface; hollow on the inside. “I do not love you. I do not even want you. I want you to distract me long enough that I don’t fall apart.” This is what I would have said to you had I been honest. What happened instead is that I smiled and kept my eyes closed.

And this triste with you, this silly dalliance, robbed me of a chance to mourn properly. Instead of moving through the sadness of a true love gone dry, man and wife torn asunder, I ran through the streets with you. You and all of your facile charms, satisfying and nutritious as corn syrup. With you, I played the coquette. You loved me, too.

You had no idea who I was.

I still remember the last morning.

I made you coffee and dry toast. I watched you brush the crumbs off of your pants on to the floor. You stood to leave and without so much as a hug, you said, “Call you tonight.” It sounded like a question. It may well have been. “These are the last words I shall ever say to you.” That’s what you would have said had you been honest.

But you weren’t. And I was hardly expecting as much. The oasis between us had dissolved. We both acknowledged it in our own ways.

It was the only thing about us that was sincere.

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Of Montreal – ‘Coquet Coquette’

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becoming a Tuesdays with Tara fan is much easier than joining a gym. how ’bout a New Year’s Resolution you’ll actually stick to?