Photo by JD Butler
1.
Your love for me has already gone
& you don’t even know it.
I lie awake, tensing & untensing, reminding myself to breathe.
Numb.
I don’t remember what it feels like to be loved, lying next to you, rubbing your shoulders, listening to your faux sleep or nightmarish fits & starts.
I only ask you dont take my friends with you.
What little I have left that teeters on that ledge where I start again & you leave off.
Do you know what colour my eyes are? Know their depths & greys?
Do you know what keeps you close & yet so far away?
I don’t understand.
You give me so little to hold on to, I feel invisable but you seem to think the world owes you a favour & you’re mine.
I cease to exist.
I refuse to live.
I’ll take the scraps like a good little bitch – watch & wait for the next tasty morsel to fall onto the floor.
If this is what you need, I have no choice but to accept.
Throw me a bone every once in a while, when you remember not to forget.
2.
I’m being selfish.
You love me with all your heart. You’re working your skinny white arse off for me, for us & I’ve got you all wrong.
You can see into the future that promises money, hotel rooms, boats, fine wine & women but didn’t you already piss that up against the wall?
I’m jaded.
Am I really what you want, tucked away in the back of suburbia, barefoot, looking like a dyke in my short-shorts & singlet?
Age wearing me down where I just want peace.
I dont want to dance or drink or muck around with you knowing there’s nothing in it for me.
Oh but there is?
Did it only just dawn on you that what’s mine is mine & you either choose to accept this mission or it will self destruct in 5, 4, 3…
What have you got to worry about anyway? You can make money, friends, music anywhere.
Well I’m 50, a woman, unemployed, questionably sane & dubiously employable & up to my eyeballs in debt.
My options are limited & guess what – you’re it!
You don’t believe in marriage & I concur. You believe in hard work in love but no cigar?
Why do it all at all if you get nothing out of it?
Why are you here complaining?
What the fuck do you want from me, if this is not a game?
3.
I’m not sure I know exactly what I’m in for.
© Copyright 2018, Jodine Derena Butler & Poetry Out West. All Rights Reserved
Poetry Out West 
Sounds like acceptance and surrender. Perhaps a little Buddhism. Thankyou. No doubt you’ll read how it pans out
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I think that it’s a combination of 1, 2 and 3 – at least it’s been in my experience. Time will tell, but unfortunately, it’s always one day at a time.
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Oh gawd, that my own bloody mantra right back at me. He’s 33 and I get that it’s easy for him but I’m staring down the oncoming train hoping it’s just two sets of eyes
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That’s not a good feeling. I’ve been there, too. All I know is that the best that I can do is to be me. All else follows.
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