I
She made me do it.
She didn’t get the hint.
Obviously I didn’t want her anymore.
Simply, things change.
It didn’t feel right.
There have been others.
I owed her no reason.
Too old, too bright, too cosmic,
she wouldn’t accept it.
She came to take her furniture.
After all I’d done for her.
I needed it.
She stood her ground.
Her silence invited me to strike.
Barbed truth prodded my hands
to encircle her neck,
grab her thin body and throw it
like a curse across the room.
Who’d have thought she’d be so light.
She bounced off her old table,
fell against the lounge, head cracking.
I nearly laughed.
I pushed her from my house.
Hurled her bag after her.
She provoked it.
Everyone says there’s two sides.
II
He dropped the blade on our love,
laughed when he dismissed me,
kept my furniture to compensate for
all he said he’d done for me.
So I visited to ask for it
and my heater to keep me warm
now I was alone.
Like Anne Boleyn
I placed my head on the block.
He squeezed my throat and pushed me.
Across the room I flew,
ricocheting off the table,
hitting my old lounge.
My head rings still,
injuries added to his insults.
Once he called me his gentle rose.
Excuses are words not blows,
not the black petals on my body.
I wanted to salvage my belongings,
remake my tattered life,
extract the thorn,
in private release the angry ichor.
Yet everyone says there’s two sides and
asks whether I provoked him.
I stood my ground, wept,
now weep no more.
Jinjirrie, 1993