Parting words

I see you there,
your arm casually slung around her shoulder,
as if this were the natural order of things,
as if this were the way your arm always is, always was.
Not ever wrapped around my shoulder,
tracing skin with skin,
fingers wrapping around my locks,
and tugging, gently.

She looks lovely, I think.
I don't need to hate her,
I simply can't know her.
Not for my pride's sake,
Lord knows I have none left,
but for me to hold,
as if frozen in a floating soap bubble,
the fantasy that you once loved me,
or might have in some alternate reality
in which her poised blonde head
did not form the perfect tête-a-tête with yours.

And I know now that you were protecting her,
not me,
and that it isn't her fault,
that the wind is knocked out of me
every time that you and I speak.
She didn't get the same memo,
signed carelessly,
the one in which you were "unavailable"
for a "relationship"
that you hope will never change.

And I want to stew in my own self-pity, too...
but I can't. There's too much to do,
too much teeming, insistent life clamoring at my door.
I wish I could unknow you,
and if such a thing seems unlikely,
that I could at least unlove you.
Gently pry out each and every tender root,
that your words have grown, variegated,
in my fecund soil.
Remove each tiny vessel that nourishes
my intellect, feeds my fantasies,
my melodious dreams.

You like to think of yourself as a good man.
A faithful man.
And you are, I suppose.
Like any responsible adult,
You only occasionally peek your head back in,
to check on the wild-eyed lupine lady,
who claims to see you,
to know you, beneath the mask.
To test that her certainty
your lives were meant to be intertwined,
earth and air, fire and water,
is still there.
Just in case,
maybe she's not crazy after all.