Sincerely, Jennifer x

My greatest weakness is a weak man with a tan line on his ring finger,
the kind of man that slides a whisky I didn’t order onto the table,
insisting that he doesn’t drink,
hinting that it’s better if I do,
confident of everything but his weathered face,
but smiling with the boyish buoyancy that only comes with decades of rejection.

He likes me because he knows we both have something to hide,
something to disguise ourselves from,
as we check in, separately, to a desperately run down hotel just off the high street,
never locking eyes in the lobby (I arrived too early), ending up in the same deception,
clean but grubby sheets,
his heavy breath somewhere above me as I disappear into pillows and places he can never go,
pills between my pretty lips,
because it is his turn to arrive early.

He asks what I like most about him,
and I point, lazily, but with great affection, to the purple shirt that graces the back of the chair.
My favourite colour,
my favourite way to distract from the undeniable masculinity of my darling.
I sleep in it, swamped in the size and soothed by how gentle and non consuming his cologne is,
when I’m half asleep, I can almost mistake it for perfume,
and I know that this was a deliberate act of kindness on his part,
so I try to remember to be sweeter when I rise in the morning.

He calls me his heaven, and every time he does, I die a little, thinking about my God,
all the promises I made to God and to myself,
and it’s too late to languish over it,
so I let him buy me another whisky,
and I while away the hours with his weary words and weathered face,
in the arms of a liar, who is only surpassed in his sins by his heaven.