Bad Poetry Friday

Untitled (2/16/03)

Liz Phair never said

anything about him

Instead her songs eluded to

what my thoughts were exactly

Anne Sexton was an infamous mistress

she washed off like watercolor

Sometimes I think he is the grime on my car

three weeks thick that the rain can’t erase

Song lyrics and lines from poems

compare nothing to the silence

on the other end of the phone

Notes: 

This was about Mike, my sophomore year in college boyfriend. It was one of those on-again, off-again relationships that was so tumultuous I had to stop talking about it to my friends because they would murder me. Even two years after the breakup he still haunted me.

The Anne Sexton poem I am referring to is my my favorite called “For My Lover Returning to His Wife.” I read it so many times that I still have it memorized over a decade later.