Every Girl I've Loved A Lifetime Ago

Lucille

I knew Lucille as the girl I could touch but never keep.
Lucille knew me as the girl she loved to leave.
She had straw colored hair and cornflower eyes.
She spoke like Kentucky and smiled like Kansas.
I first met her when her knees were scaped from climbing trees and she had a gap between her two front teeth.
I last met her when she had cigarette dangling from her mouth and a mean glean in her creully blue eyes.
Lucille had me wrapped around her finger and hanging on her every word.
She called me pretty and magnetic, funny and sacred, lovable and intelligent.
She called me her one true best friend while pressing her mouth against mine.
She told me I was weak and immoral, ugly and dull, unimportant and insane.
Lucille told me I wasn't good enough, while sobbing on my shoulder.
Lucille said she loved me on Thursday then called me a dyke on Monday.
She told me I was her world on Tuesday then decided on Sunday that I wasn't worth a dime
She played tug-of-war with my mind, savored my confusion, my doubt.
She indulged in my pain, the grief that overtook me every time she left.
She was not in love with me, but the misery that I carried because of her.
She relished in making me feel small and she crafted the world to be bigger than it was just to keep me so.
Half of me loved her, the other half of me hated her.
I was at odds with myself, a war waged within my heart.
Lucille had shadows under her lash line, fear in her pupils, and pain in her plight.
Lucille had dirt underneath her fingernails, lips so chapped they bled, and a stomach so hungry it ate itself.
She carried herself with a self righteousness that any god would envy.
She believed she could do no wrong.
And yet she fed off my sorrow like it was a crumb and she was a starving man.
She was a beautiful hypocrite, a lover made of contradictions, her lips spewed more poison than words.
Lucille listed to calming ocean sounds in order to fall asleep.
Lucille only liked roses if they're the pink kind.
Lucille's favorite movie genre was comedy, but she never laughed at any of the jokes.
Lucille cried easily, and she cried ugly.
Her face twisted up, her eyes squinted and creased, her lip curled up and her nose scrunched down.
Her tears were fat and warm and many, her sobs loud and broken and choked.
I held her when she cried, wrapped my arms around her waist and let her tears soak my shoulders.
I helped her when she cried, pet her blond hair and whispered comfort.
I loved her when she cried, I looked her in the face and saw no ugly.
I was often the reason she cried, she said I made her feel worthless, like she didn't deserve me, ashamed.
I never cried in front of her, only when her back was turned as she walked out the door.
But she heard my sobs and wails with a smile on her face.
She made my heart break and her heart mended.
It fused back together again, it became whole. Her cold, dead heart beating and human once mine was torn apart.
My pain kept her alive.