i lost you
to beautiful girls, better dancers
who studied textbook-approved
algorithms and theories by day,
the dry shell of an intellectual
covering their warm bodies,
who carefully pressed
the very top of their lower backs
into your hands by night.

you ran across
the dance floor with them,
smiling awkwardly,
girls not sure how to act
and hoping they could
get away from
you, mad on punch
and nerves strung higher
than the heavens.

a pity dance is all it was.

if you don't understand that
then good luck,
kid.

i lost you
to poetry howling from
dollar-store notebooks,
cardboard covers of
black and white
and words that spun
like mad tops
in chickenscratch handwriting,
that fierce machine of a heart
beating for some
unbearable tomorrow that will never come

except to the lucky.
the lucky ones always get tomorrow, don't they?

and you try and you try
and yet you lose
to boys four inches
taller than you,
twenty pounds lighter
and a better complexion.

so much for romanticism,
cheers to your first rejection.

and then sometimes i feel
like you lost me,
to hardcover novels
stained with rings of coffee,
with men on the dustjacket
with their glasses and grey hair,
whose minds i envied,
whose inner workings i studied
at 2 a.m. on saturday evenings

with nothing coming before me
and nothing coming after me.

and then i realized
that i didn't have to settle
for you.

there's plenty of other
fish with legs
in the sea.

yes, you lost me
to mascara brushes
and sweet english tea,
to growing older
and losing my mad winter days
of scabs and long sweaters,
of ignoring you for twelve-point letters,
of feeling wanted
but not much better.

now that i'm whole
it seems like
i am scaring you away.

i guess crazy women
are your emotional forte.

yes, you lost me
to shaky walks across the park
and standing by myself
in the midnight dark
with a smile on my face.

if you don't like me now,
you didn't like me in the first place

and i
am done
caring.