As sun set,
you carved a love letter on an old oak tree,
and I sat, submerged in the grass with a weary sigh,
my eyes rolling as you presented me with yet another grand romantic gesture.
Don’t you know that I’ve seen it all before?
There is not a path that you can take me down that I haven’t already walked.
I know the end of the book, because I’ve watched it being written,
the ink,
sinking into my skin by the pens of my past paramours.
If we cut down the tree,
we could count up the rings and read her story.
Inside of me,
there are no rings,
just the echoes of gestures and earnest promises,
passion that plateaued, when the fires grew cold,
and the shadow of a smile that tried to survive as long as she could,
gathering the courage to believe, despite her head’s solid advice,
that her heart was not to be listened to.
If you cut me down,
you would find a heart,
broken and barely beating,
swollen at the seams, with all the things she used to believe,
all the pain of being passed over,
scrunched up on the sofa as the night wore on,
wondering why she wasn’t enough to come home to, as her lover prowls the streets and the late night scene for someone more appealing.
You say that I never smile,
but I did, for such a long time,
for so many who couldn’t see it,
so, now I’m “mean”,
now I’m a storm cloud,
and you are out in the open,
just asking for trouble,
knowing that all I do is rain,
but waiting underneath my path, with a smile and a solemn promise to love me,
as if I haven’t heard it all before.
I don’t let you cut me down,
because the truth will ring out,
and your carved initials next to mine will not keep the pain from pouring and pouring like a burst bank.
This is what I must become.
I have been a victim of my lover’s weakness,
so I became wicked.
This is what I have become.
This is what love has done to me.
You say that I never smile,
but I did for such a long time.
I just don’t believe in it anymore.
I got a woman mean as she can be
Sometimes I think she’s almost mean as me
Sincerely, Jennifer x 