The End of Fun

 This was always arguably a bad idea.

I should unhand myself of this weapon of destruction,

because the only thing being destructed is my trodden-on and smeared-across heart. 

I was determined to start this but now it’s turned into a jaunt into jail.

A flailing plastic girl; I have furled and unfurled, grasped for something then

curled away and clenched my insides

to bide my time, see what happens, suspend what I deep down believe.

Then: irretrievable, lost: a memory, only last week

I attempted to stage an intervention on myself.

I sabotaged whatever we had. Planted a landmine and

launched a jihad.

Mostly good, but admittedly bad, I deleted those digits, the text.

I still, wearing these pink tinted specs, wish it had lasted

just a little bit longer.

I still think that had I been stronger and more the finished article,

perhaps all these little particled nights

could have been stitched together and those twilights

in the tiny hours might have been stretched

into mornings. You’d have wanted to stay, if you could.

But I’ve never been that good

at playing it cool, despite all the warnings.

I don’t always get the rules, and – well – if you do, you don’t seem to care for them.

Temptation is always there, a message,

a step backwards, down another rung, I’ve got the lesser-known lower hand

that no one wants to be lumbered with.

A significant number of people I love and listen to

tell me not to back-track;

instead, they say: “sprint away

as fast as your little legs will carry you”.

So I go: through brambles and nettles that bite my ankles. Run up

a steep hill and then  leap over the hurdles.

Try to knock down obstacles and barricades

that I’ve arranged and manoeuvred to get in my own way.

I think I mistook the games you play

for something different.

This is nothing and that will never be a lot of anything.

As long as you’ve got me waiting here, trying to be

the perfect person to you,

slapping myself slick and shaving myself hairless, on cue.

I wrap my legs around purely because you ask me to.

What a joke.

To you, I’m a bespoke service in banter, gossip and sex.

You rarely get the first two because you’re only interested in what comes next,

and the end of the evening is always the same:

you’ve never called me by my first name.

It’s a beguiling and bewildering

game of pretend.  I wouldn’t be your friend if you begged me.

No magic 8 ball can toss up a happy ending out of blue;

No mind-tricks can bend this spoon to reach out to you,

no one will strike an enchanted match to light a fire

if you’re not warm already.

The firewood is dead and rotting and stinks of your rejection.

On reflection, instead of thinking straight or

doing the right thing, I flung myself towards you and then I think you

flung me further than you meant to.

In the end, you decided – didn’t you – that

you weren’t going to bother going and fetching

me. I was left in the drizzle, with the firewood,

and you thought fizzling out was good enough treatment for me.

So, over and out like a rained-on tea light.

Swan back to your manufactured life

that looks normal and so civilised to the outside.

Whiter than your cricket whites everyone thinks, but your

empty chest has no heart inside.

I’ve tried to burrow, dig around. But the only sound is an echo,

bouncing off a cavern of dry ice that stings

the eyes and chills the marrow.

What does she know and how would she feel?

And why do I feel the guilt when you feel

nothing at all?

One day, a twig will fall, get caught in the spokes

of the wheel you’re spinning.

The flimsy paper-thin veneer, like a mist

that’s gone before it had chance to disappear.

Your “life”. You are supposed to live it,

be real, feel something.

You don’t, and I conclusively and absolutely won’t

waste any more minutes.

My life will be far simpler without the delusion of

you possibly, could-be, maybe being in it.

Stay away. Stop all of this.

Take back your poisoned, puppet-master kiss.

I’m done. 

This is no longer fun.