Poem of the Day 08.05.08

my new blue shoes

she and i were exchanging
old lover stories one night,
instigated by me
because i was looking for
a new reason to hate her.
because to be young
and to think that you are
in love
is to sometimes also
become a prick.
she was my first
but she had given it away to
a few others,
one that i felt a particular jealousy
toward,
a high school teacher in the city,
seven years older than she,
and a summer fling months
before we met.

we began innocent enough
on the bed
relaxed
but hot in the summer air,
as she told me about how they met
and the banal way in which it ended.
truthfully, it was a boring story.
“but you fucked him, right?”
i asked.
her face in the pale night light
turned sour
and she made me wait
longer than i wanted to for the answer.
“yes,” she said.
then began to cry as i hopped
out of her bed, shouting, calling her a whore,
while i began to dress myself quickly.
her tears were like torrents,
soaking the pillow she clutched,
and her mouth was a basin of spittle,
one strand connected her
furrowed lips.
the way she moaned made me
proud of my work.
and as she continued to cry
i finished dressing and left.

outside her house
i noticed the new blue shoes
that i had on my feet.
we’d bought them together earlier
in the day
at a shoe store in a suburban mall
where another of her old boyfriends
worked.
i didn’t think much of the shoes.
they were tight
and not my style.
but had it not been for them...and him,
she and i probably never
would’ve had the conversation
about ex-lovers in the first place.