Seven Poems
my emotions are so intense you can’t ignore me
but you will anyway
and if you don’t
you won’t be nice
and i won’t either
but we will both try to be nice
and that doesn’t make sense
but it is what will happen
*
for two lonely people
to be mean
and stay alone
when they could talk
and be nice,
but ‘nice’ is somehow impossible
and i don’t know why it’s impossible
because i miss seeing you
i saw you a lot
and it’s kind of hard
to figure anything out
when people don’t talk at all
*
when people say things like ‘you’ll get over it’
i don’t know what that means
because some things must be so bad
that no one ever gets over them,
like getting castrated or fighting in iraq,
but things will eventually become
less painful to think about
i hope
your roommates
your one roommate has a deep fryer
everyone liked it at the party
your other roommate emailed me about how the CIA looks at facebook
and i told her i already knew that
and i told her the CIA will probably read her email now
and she didn’t type anything back
your other roommate saw me at a chinese restaurant
after you broke up with me
she sat at the table right next to mine
and my friend and i talked shit about you
because we didn’t see her
and then she turned around and said ‘hi’
two weeks after breaking up
the fat girl across the street almost raped me and i was okay with that
because i thought about you the whole time
which was weird because your bodies are different
you don’t know about this because i never told you
three weeks after breaking up
we got in an argument where sadness became a sort of competition
about who is more fucked up
because you wanted to talk
but you didn’t actually say anything
and then i realized that you are insecure about life
in ways that make me hate myself
and i hate pointing out personality flaws
and i pointed out that you are not sorry
at least four times
for coming to a party at my house and not talking
to me on my birthday
and you finally said you were sorry
but you made excuses, which made it seem like
you are not sorry
and i don’t know what you think about anything now
four weeks after breaking up
i went over to your apartment
and we watched annie hall
i hated watching it with you
you liked it
i said ‘they dated in real life and
woody allen wrote this movie after they broke up’
you liked that
you bent over for something
and your back skin looked nice
and i went home and cried
five weeks after breaking up
we had poetry class together
we didn’t make eye contact
the teacher had us do writing exercises
he said ‘write about a failed relationship’
and we had to read it aloud
this actually happened and it was horrible
you misquoted me in a way that made me look stupid
i said an honest thing that happened
and my voice was shaking
if you and me were in competitive debate teams, like in high school, i think i would win, but it would be an empty victory
your name is the name of a real person
that deleted over forty facebook wall posts
in an act that, in retrospect,
became a source of major confusion for the both of us
and someone might think i am ‘creepy’ or ‘overly dramatic’ for typing this
and that someone probably likes movies like one hour photo
where they make the lonely person a psycho
that no one can relate to
and no one is nice to that movie character
but the movie never explains why he is lonely
because people antagonize loneliness and it makes things worse
loneliness is a cultural taboo, maybe
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Moran is just a normal person from Columbus, Ohio.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Sunday, October 21st, 2007.
