Your binary mind couldn’t figure out if I was type B or A
and so you turned me into a blood test and found
there’s often more options than not,
such as deciding when to type
“Oh”, the most harrowing reply in the English language.
These might be slow burns, caused by cigarette butts
extinguished on the crook of my arm
while snowflakes of American Spirit fall from the sky and that was when I realized that
I didn’t notice the damage since I was too busy
being corroded from the inside by you.
I would like to think that the opposite of nothing is
quite honestly everything
but you couldn’t even afford sweet somethings
with a platinum card that carried enough miles to fly to Venus.
That was a unique kind of violence.
Especially when you thought you were so noble that
whenever you held the door open or picked up the tab
and held it,
dissolved it hostage under the penitentiary of your tongue first then mine,
you forgot that the only rule in the playbook — My Highness —
was really to be kind.
Or when you say that hurting is a necessary evil
when what lies behind left ribs is anything but feckless or
something you can liquidate when you please,
you didn’t realize that a calloused mind can be
an explanation that drags after semicolons
but not an alibi.
“She must be whipped”, you said,
while your self sabotage became a syringe
creating track marks on the other love of your life
her name was ego
I met her a few times
And boy, did I feel so sorry for her.
I also felt bad for you when you came back crawling so deep your knees scabbed
And I wonder what part of you thought it was a good idea to reveal
that your weakness hinged
only on my very own.
In that moment, I learned that maybe
People are so busy being afraid of endings they don’t realize that
They are already curdling up on the inside but
at the same time
They ought to spoil themselves a little more.
In that moment the three most beautiful words in the English language were
“shame on you”.
Because B is for battered and A is for ascending,
and in which case
I am both.
Celena Chong is a freelance journalist, spoken word lover and pianist. You can see more of her at www.celenachong.com.
