Sparkatale

We drove home each night,

Each star-lit night,

and you used to smile at me.

Hand tangled in hair 

tangled in hearts-

we were inseparable.

I never liked to sit up front, and still

I sat next to you no matter where.

And just before we turned onto the

street we lived on,

We'd pass a house.

You would always say,

"Turn at the corner of that ugly yellow house."

We'd share a bed, and we'd share a dream,

and we'd share a laugh.

We used

to be happy like that.

 

One night we drove home in the pouring 

rain. It covered us like sheets.

Teeth chattering, breath wavering, hands rubbing, 

Chilled,

You didn't welcome me to bed.

The lights were burnt out 

and I could only feel the deep thrumming

of something I couldn't name.

Still, I begged for something.

"Hold my paint burshes, love,"

I said as I prepared the canvas. 

I had to pick the brushes up from the floor.

Knuckles bleeding, throats aching, skies crying, I was so

Angry

with you.

Agony bled through my shirt, sticky and revolting

where my heart once was,

But you were unrelenting in your attempts

to tear me down.

All this anger ripped away at me

like a hurricane-

All that worthless anger-

I've said things

to this bedroom wall I regret.

 

The next night we went home you still said,

"Turn at the corner of that ugly yellow house,"

but your eyes were dull and unseeing.

Your body was cold as death, and 

it was as if you didn't hear a word you'd just said.

I wanted to pour paint over your head.

I wanted you to say something!

Anything

to show me you weren't this robot,

this mechanical being that utters and sputters

the same things

over and over- that isn't 

what it is to be human;

I find myself thinking humanity 

is something only found on the page of a 

dictionary. 

We slept in the same bed, but we

never shared a soul as we used to.

You have broken that from me.

 

On the third night I forced myself

through the torment of driving

home with you. We passed

that house

in a choking, a suffocating kind of silence.

And so I tried to say it,

I said,

"Turned at the corner of that ugly yellow house."

You are solid concrete under anything

I thought you once were.

I don't know why

broken wrists and shattered kneecaps are

not enough to say "I'm in pain."

    And if I do know anything, I know

that you can't live

in a world with an absent sun. 

Alone on this highway,

I only wish I painted that house a prettier color.