poetry for the poetic: 5

CXXIII

guess i should look
back and remember
i was good before i met him,
when my heart existed in a notebook
nobody else got to read,
lines others had left behind
and a broken heart i'd conceded
as defeated,
my mind
happy
to be empty
cause i couldn't be mistreated
if i didn't know anybody,
if i lived only in the poetry,
but he gave me a beat,
ink-line in the passenger seat,
a silhouette
after to ash him cigarette
on my table of contents
cause he got off on the suspense
of burning through every boy before him,
turn my pages to tinder
and inhale the lines,
gasp in the reclined
seat, fill his lungs
with my art as the rhyme slides
down his tongue,
spit me out on the curbside
and say goodbye,
i was barely worth the time,
and i
guess i'm
trying to remember
what life was like before i met him,
wondering why i'm not able
to think of another name on that table
of contents
cause it doesn't make sense
that i can't think of anything
else and i'm the only thing
he can't think of.