Sunflowers in the rain

Sunflowers in the rain

In the rain sunflowers turn their faces and become umbrellas

deflect the wetness and embrace the vague.

In the sun, they turn and look invited into my window, to my chair, focus

watch me scratch my head, hold the last of your photos

now removed from frames and their prime positions around the house-

one where we watched America’s Got Talent together and the other one in the bedroom -

it’s the one we’d had lunch and then returned to our hotel and made love all afternoon.

The sunflowers and I bake, sweat, stare, catharse and wonder what went wrong

how it all unraveled.

Why wasn’t I enough? You told me I was your everything!

In fairness, you did chuckle when I repeated the refrain.

You lied. I didn’t.

Why did you need to go there, to that dark place you go to alone? Why damnit?!!!!!!

FUCK!

Eyeless sunflower faces stare, don’t look away even as they

don’t understand how I didn’t see, know, feel, call you on it,

how I couldn’t figure it out sooner, or instead, figured it and worse,

why I also ignored it, didn’t call you out, 

why I didn’t bail, ring the bell, hit the bricks when you fed me

astounding righteous bullshit and rationales

like I was some sort of neophyte to this scene of dependency and relational lies.

You got too comfortable, entitled, too angry, perturbed, jostled -

let down your guard one time too many and finally made the fatal mistake -

the wrong audience, the critic who would not be bought.

The sunflowers know because they

felt your face, your smile and remember

how our hearts once beat together,

how we could melt at a touch,

how we connected through mind speak and even when asleep.

DAMNIT!!!!!

I’ve learned that when a woman tells me

“you’re a really nice man unlike any other I’ve ever met:

you see me, hear me, know me, listen, can read me, we’re so connected: soul mates” –

that I’ve been handed a terminal diagnosis,

a death sentence.

I’m done already, skewered, hung, inverted, exsanguinated like a Halal chicken and also

in need of a place to land when I'm cut down and fall over,  my final run completed.