Empty Handed

Hey. I been a long time gone. I have been emptied of words.

I wish I could say it hurt me less than it hurt you.

I was a bad lover. I neglected you when all you wanted was a kind word.

The harm was done first in my chest.

A man treated me peripherally. That was after I opened under his fingers, under his body. After the August night he entered me roughly. Every thrust clearing glass. I didn't know how to speak. The next day, he said, Did I hurt you. And I said what was not true: "You could never hurt me."

A man stood me up for dinner. (And I was definitely going to put out).

I didn't mean to hurt you, I think they'd say, confronted.

A man who amazes me is too far away and the distance, sometimes, isn't merely geographical.

I've been twice to Houston, city of old wounds, and it healed me. Twice I've been a few miles from the man who used to love me, and all we have now is the silence in which we keep unknowing each other.

I didn't mean to hurt him either.

Almost all the friends I saw showed me pictures of devastation.

I was not devastated.

I miss you so easily. I just noticed you weren't here. I reached across the bed for you.

It wasn't until after I quit smoking that I noticed they airbrushed the cigarette out of Bette Davis' hand.