Brown Cookware

You picked out new cookware,
Pots, pans, kettles, casseroles.
All the best brands because
You’ve never settled, have you?
I think brown is a dumb color
For cookware but I’m not sharing it.
You don’t need plates though
Because you’re using ours.
Pass me the butter dish, darling.
Yes, that’s right, the one that used to be hers.
I like my butter dirty and used.

I wonder if you ever get confused,
Lie in bed and think about
Which face you’re going to wake up to;
Mine that greeted you for nearly a decade,
Or hers, just dying to paint just the right
Expression for you.
I bet she sleeps in her makeup.
You got a cat and cats are stupid.
You strum along to Zeppelin and she hums too,
Not knowing that you learned
Over the Hills and Far Away for me
And that the first time you played it through
We cried like children.

Your jeans with holes,
Your leftover crust,
Your falling out hair and
Your inability to spell reminisce.
These are all hers now and
Thank god.
You were terrible at remembering
When to take out the garbage and
She seems just the type to help you out.

We Knew Just Friends Couldn't Work

I missed you more than I should have.
The days we didn’t talk
Actually made it easier to get on.
And we both knew just friends couldn’t work.
Weeks went by and we finally decided
We could hang out.
But when I innocently bent over
And pressed my lips to the top of your head,
And when you sat up and looked at me
Asking with your eyes if that was
What you thought it was,
I knew.
After a few agonizing seconds of
Wondering if we were really going to do this,
You kissed me as if there weren’t weeks
Between our lips’ last meeting.
Same taste, same touch, same tenderness.
Everything—the truth that we’ll never work out,
The pep talk I gave myself on the way over,
The insurmountable differences—it all just
Melted away.
And what was left was you and me,
Our lips dancing and your hands in my hair
On your bed in our quiet town,
The world spinning madly on outside your window.
We knew just friends couldn’t work.

Stupid Song

I heard that stupid song you love today. The twangy one about chicken and blue jeans.
I hate this song, it’s ridiculous. But I couldn’t turn the dial, wouldn’t dare. Because with every word I was reminded of another moment we shared, another second I’d trade ten days for now. Driving with the windows down. Walking through town. Sleeping on the too-small couch together with our bodies tangled. Buying flowers. As it ended, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment at my realization that I let the whole damn song play just because it brought me back to you. A stupid song about chicken and blue jeans can bring me back to you and back to my sad realization that I never got to say to you what I had to say. You’ll never know that with those windows down, in that town, during that nap, among those flowers, I was desperately, unstoppably, irrevocably falling in love with you. And now, the closest I come to anything resembling love is flushing when I hear that stupid song about chicken and blue jeans….