Nice Lies

Nice lies
I compliment them too like I do your occasional smiles
Like my pale skin does complement your cold blue eyes
Like that dark satin dress once did with your shapely young-thing’s thighs
I’d surrender into finding hidden monsters clawing away half-alive,
You’d dance my metronome heart off-balance, all aflutter and surprised.
Your long-legged approach in clicking heels fills my eyesight
I’m just a few inches taller and your head fits in my shoulder just right
I look at you like I’m on drugs and you’re brightly strobing lights
Like you’re life, my escort to endlessly expanding heights
You’re my sedative that let’s me rest from my incessant ravings in the night.
I’ve fought so hard to be well, our word for me staying clear of razors and knives
The vocabulary that develops from closeness and trust won through strife
The bonding before the friction rips us apart again like cheap sheets’ fibres
But maybe one of us got strangled in linen and maybe it takes two to help love survive
The same face seen every day depreciates like the sun bleached its features white
I saw you every day like an ominous portent of doom, some schedule that confines
You follow me like a lost dog from room to room, as our depressions multiply
When exactly did we start taking each other for granted?
When did we decide it was unnecessary to be romantic and we’d just be friend and hold hands and…what?
Sometime between your one thousandths disappointment in me and my one millionth breakdown?
During a long winter when we thought we lost everything but it was just a warning sign
We held to each other until our body warmth faded, almost died
The trade off never equal—one taking and one giving, vice versa for the sequel
The bed gets colder, days pass without much conversation as we get older
And our friends fall in love again and celebrate the rapture of heartbreak
While we stay together like that’s the way we are and that’s the way we’ll stay
And you still maintain you love my like when we first met
Nice lies
I compliment them like I do your occasional smiles

07/10/17
image courtesy of pixabay