Out of breath

Palermo, Sicily

Out of breath

I could collapse on this floor and you would

step right over me.

Out of breath

But to you it doesn’t matter.

I don’t matter.

Fine.

But why only me?

I don’t know if you really care with them

but you at least pretend

and if I didn’t know you the way I do

maybe I wouldn’t know the difference

*

(today for the first time I wondered

maybe it would’ve been better if we hadn’t)

But I couldn’t know how it would go

before we got there.

*

And really though, I don’t want to be naïve.

and I am still sweet even after what you did

I have to fight against the lies

but I am still inside me, somewhere

*

And after all of it?

You might as well just have left me alone.

Can I write this in small little lines?

I don’t know why

I’m doing this anymore

I only have fun when I forget you’re there

I won’t teach you wrong from right

if you haven’t learned by now

If you haven’t begun to care, by now.

Your ‘moral obligation’ left the table

as soon as I told you how much it cost.

And you realized you couldn’t buy your way back in.

I don’t even know where I begin

but I keep it all in the back of my mind

for those moments when I doubt.

You are so good at being someone else.

So I pick a memory off of the shelf

and remind myself

of how I suffered

when I was one

of yours.