poem of the day 09.11.14

stuff

she was insistent

that i drive out to her house to get my stuff

i don’t want your stuff hanging

around here anymore

it had been less than a week since we’d ended

i’m sick of looking at

all of your stuff, she told me on the phone

i went out to her house on a saturday night

a week before we had been going to the movies

or going out for bad mexican food

having bad sex in her bedroom

now we were face to face in her dining room

with all of my stuff scattered on the table

and two black garbage bags

like deflated balloons hung over a chair

i want you to take your stuff and go, she said

but then she started crying when i began packing everything

i hate you, she said

she ran upstairs to play more

sad break-up music on her stereo

it was supposed to be symbolic

the music boomed throughout her house

i just kept thinking of the poor neighbors

who had to put up with our shit

while she was gone

i got most of my stuff into one black garbage bag

old denim shorts, hoodies

books i’d let her borrow that she’d never read

she had two of my poetry manuscripts

and i was glad to have them back

the poetry inside was bad but at least it was mine

she’d ripped out both dedications

and had them crumpled into a ball

with more of my stuff

i tried to leave before she came back down

but i wasn’t fast enough

what’s this? she said, pointing back into the dining room

there’s still stuff on the table

true….but it was stuff that i had given her as gifts

stuffed animals, a framed photo, perfume, a tin ring

a journal because she wanted to be a poet too

she had the christmas ornament that i’d given her

on the table too

that’s not my stuff, i said

well, i don’t want them, she said

she tore into the dining room like a maniac

and started putting all of that stuff into the other garbage bag

including the crumpled dedications

all of your poems are lies, she said

the music was booming in her home so loudly

that i couldn’t think

i couldn’t wait to get out of there

i needed a cigarette and a vodka

some friends and i, we were going to a bar later

to meet a few girls and talk about some stuff

here, she said

she tossed the other garbage bag at me

it landed at my feet with some stuffed animal

looking me right in the eye

so i grabbed the other bag and hit the road

while she wailed and her shitty, loud music played

i crossed her street for the last time

i looked like some sad sack santa claus

with two huge bags of stuff slung over my back

then i sat in my car

i smoked a cigarette

and read some of my bad poems

i watched her watching me

from her dining room

you could hear the music blasting from outside

then she shut the light off

and i crushed my smoke

i threw the poetry manuscripts in the back seat

and drove off with no music playing

thinking it was hard to be the sensitive artist type

and wondering where in the hell

i could find a garbage can big enough

to hold all of this stuff.