poem of the day 11.04.09

end again

i remember
she was crying on the phone
she said
i could’ve waited
until you were thirty
or forty even
but you had
to go and screw all of this up
my mother thinks
you’re cheating on me
and i don’t know
what to think
and really
you’ve left
me no choice here
but to end this
so that’s
what i’m doing
right now
i’m ending things with you.
then she got off the phone
and i left the basement
to get myself
a beer from the refrigerator
i went into the backyard
it was november
thirty degrees outside
and i was only
twenty-one years old
free
and i swear
i felt better in that moment
than i had in the
last six months
and fourteen years later
i still get a tingle
in my chest
just thinking about it.
so thank you
thank you, mary
it was the best thing
you’d ever done for me
in our twenty-one months together,
baby.