Pulling away the curtain, revealing another curtain

You left a message on my phone that said I wasn’t allowed to write about you anymore. Or maybe your mother did. I didn’t actually check my messages or look at the caller ID or actually have a phone connected anymore. But I like to think that’s what happened while I scribbled on blank pages, the backs of envelopes, an old eviction notice.

Because look at what I was doing. I was incarnating and incarcerating you again and again. Shackled in words of my choosing. A homunculus of every bad feeling. You bled out onto the page, merged with people I’ve known and still know, written down how I wanted, crucifixion as creative nonfiction.

Look, I have exhausted you, and I wish I could say I was sorry. I put you on like an old sweater and I wore you out, which I mean that two ways. I feel like I should be ashamed. I feel like people should be calling me up to chide me. But it’s just praise and praise and praise. Oh he’s so honest, oh his pain it must be real, oh he really resonates. No one said how dare you. No one said I’m draining the blood from a good woman. No one said you are a liar for saying any of this is the truth and you are a liar for saying any of it isn’t. No one said anything at all while I stood up there and read these things I have written, these words I have shored up against my own sense of failure. It’s not like an apology would be anything but hollow anyway.