My Performance

I will make all the mistakes
I will tell you I miss you and
I’m lonely, and my heart
keeps making this horrible
cracking noise, and I don’t know
what to do about it.

I ensure you will never,
never love me again.
I give up my power
for you. I hand it to you,
whatever I gathered,
from my discontent, from
always being just a little less
devoted than you were.

I hand this to you on a silver platter.
These are my organs.
These are my inner workings.
I never gave them up when we
were together, but now
that we are both vegan and celibate
I gift them to you like raw
and slithery meat.

This is my performance for you,
I break and re-break my heart
with a hammer and chisel just
for the show of it, the way
it explodes like plaster and glitter.
I do this ten times for every year
we were happy and a hundred times
for the years we were not.

I perform surgery on my own
organs. No anesthetic necessary.
I will give you the best
seat at the window, so you can
admire my steady hand and neat
stitching.

I become a side show freak for you
the girl with one arm, half a heart
no stomach, can’t contain anything
anymore.

I write disjointed poems
with no set theme or meter about you.
I plaster them everywhere, flyers
for some hopeless campaign that
catch your eye as you walk
home by yourself and make you
think of me.

*It was inevitable that some of my breakup poems would end up here, so here's the first.