What You Tried to Do
by Nicole Marie Moore (inspired by the poetry of Charles Bukowski, 1920–1994)
What you tried to do was package me in a life you had created.
The problem was that I didn't fit.
I had edges you couldn't make round,
Corners that stuck out in messy fashion —
And you hate messiness.
You introduced me to your wealthy, or beautiful, or artistic friends and expected me to wow them,
But I couldn't wow them because they were strangers I was expected to wow.
You judged me for this.
Your friends probably did too.
What you wanted was for me to be like your last.
But I couldn't be.
(I didn't know the lines to the role you had imagined me in.
You forgot to tell me.)
But I kept catching glimpses of the role, after the fact,
After all the facts…
What you tried to do was make me your whore
And I was for awhile,
And willingly.
What you did was fly me to you
Across ocean's waters,
Then treated me like a stranger, but worse
Because you forgot to be polite.
What you did was provide affection from afar and reject me in proximity,
You pronounced and proclaimed to me what I should be and what I had not yet become, for you.
(Your audacity to judge me so harshly still pricks at my skin, at my soul, at the nerves, through my veins.)
But what you really did was you could not love me,
Though you tried.
Words mean nothing, you finally said,
After saying so much with them.
And we were left with less than nothing.
