Member Poem

I am at a funeral for a man who is very much alive.

The smell of deceit and abandonment consumes me. You were supposed to be my first love, the first man I could ever trust. Your breath smells like stale hops and cannabis, the lingering smell of lies hidden behind your vices. I never thought this is the road I would take but yet I walk it alone. I stood at the fork for an eternity, my face thinning out, my hair going limp. All tokens of my love for you, unrequited and unproved on your face.

I begged you to stay, sat on my knees until the blood and tears stained the floor beneath me. I cried until my fountains ran dry, screamed until my voice was nothing but a whisper, and you, stoned-faced and stagnant, let it fall on deaf ears. So finally I have decided to let you die, I have cast you away. I have let another take your place, the pedestal not as high as it should be.

There is no mourning, just finally a weight lifted away, a breath of fresh air. I had been drowning in your broken promises for a lifetime. I didn’t know that letting go could feel this euphoric, this enticing. I always thought letting you go would feel like losing a limb, the phantom pain of what used to be stinging away at my soul. But you were never there to begin with, just an artificial blip in my mind. A cancer of my heart, eating me up until I couldn't breath, but so attached to you I could never remove.

The walls of our relationship have been falling in for a while. The ceiling is leaking, I breathe in the mold of the room every time I let you back. I obliged, swimming in your waters and breathing in your toxins. I allowed to you take over my being, until we didn’t know where you ended and where I started. Others around me screamed and raged, our own little mob, spitting out harsh words. Telling me to leave you in the dust, to grow into a butterfly. I let you drag me down, away from their logic and reasons. You convinced me if I left I would not emerge my cocoon a butterfly but a moth. I did not heed their warnings as I should have.

That’s why I am here today at a funeral for a man who is very much alive. I am mourning what could've been between us and cherishing my freedom. I was just a little girl when you started your game of lies and revenge. Now you've made me a shell of the woman I could've been. I will spend the rest of my life fixing the water stains and mold you've left in the apartment of my heart. I will have to play electrician and rewire my brain to trust again. I will have to bury you more than six feet under to move on. But, in the end, this funeral for a man who is alive will be the best event I have ever attended. For now I am free. Now I can flourish as a Monarch.