Fear Destroys Everything Good

And what I wanted you to know

Before you turned around

And walked out of my life

Is that it's okay to love someone. 

I'm not saying that there isn't risk.
I'm saying that not everyone you love

Is going to use it as an opportunity

To exploit you.

You pushed me away
For fear that I would leave you
Or, worse yet, 
That I would accept you.

Now, you stand victorious but alone,

Having fulfilled the very 
Abandonment Prophesy

That you so dreaded.
 
I cherished you
And that meant nothing.
I am the ally
You refashioned into a problem.
And now your nemesis misses you.
 
To be sure,
It's not the grand stuff
Of an epic love story that I miss.
It was the first time you held my hand.
It was seeing you swim out into the lake.
 It was watching you paint.
It was how you always asked 
What I was going to do tomorrow.
It was how that question challenged me 
To do something that mattered.
It was how you refused to wash the sheets 
When I was gone
Because my cologne was still on them.
It was how the inspiration of your presence in my life
Made me want to be a better man.

You're sorry that you hurt me
But I'm not the only one who lost.
We were both cheated of happiness
And it ripped apart every beautiful
possibility. 

You once told me that

Fear destroys everything good in your life.

How can I forgive you

For letting the innocent joy between us
Become one of its casualties?

I don't understand.
 I don't know how to let go.

 And I can't call my dear friend

To help me...

Because that would be you. 

A Dirty Girl To Show Me The Ropes

I.
I.
How to take it
To see an old lover?

I've lived long enough
Been single strong enough
To come across those I loved
Who didn't love me back;
Now with children,
Pretentious husband,
And reading the Bible a lot

II.
I was a newly graduated sixteen year-old
Whose first double date
Was also his first date.
She was a short-shorts,
Tall statured,
Buxom girl who would be a junior
Once this fragile summer was over.

Thank God my buddy had his driver's permit
Or we never would have made it out of
A town of 1,500
Into the cultural Mecca of Duluth
To dine at that shitty Mexican place
I'm sorry they boarded up long ago.

Driving back from Park Point
Where I -
It can only be described as "executed" -
My first kiss,
I was shaken.

I called to mind what the guy in "Blue Lagoon"
Did to Brooke Shields.
But something was off
Because the force behind my gnashing lips
Kept pushing her head back.
"One more for the road"
I said very cleverly before it was time to go.

After dropping off his girl,
The three of us were making our way back home to Moose Lake.
She suddenly became giddy
And boasted how a classmate once yelled at her
"Hey Lisa!
I wanna fuck your pussy!"
She said it with such relish,
Laughing hysterically thereafter,
That I just wanted to
Shrink and disappear;
Never to be recognized
As someone fool enough
To be seen with such an embarrassing whore.

III.
She has four kids,
Is happily married
And refers to her children as
"A gift from God".
I don't know where this tenderness came from
But I wish it had been around when I knew her.
Or at least I wish she were newly divorced;
I longed to place my hand on the small of her back,
Bring her close,
And make right a kiss.

Even if she had been
1985's picture of ladyhood and softness,
It never would have lasted.
Back then, I needed
A dirty girl to show me the ropes.
Little did I know
That far too many
Would bind my heart with them instead.

IV.
The greatest thing about being alone
Is that you can't be hurt.
The worst thing about being alone
Is that you hurt anyway.