The Best

The greatest thing you ever did for me was walk away,

Turn your back like we all knew you would and disappear

In the crowd, lose your mind on a mirror and a dollar bill,

Don’t return phone calls or that lousy email and fade.

But you don’t understand, I grew up with you,
And gave you the best part of my innocent youth;

Asked for nothing in return but a love so pure

It would blind the angels like I knew it could,

But you gave up on me and stopped trusting me…

And despite my youthfulness I knew how to help you.

The best way for you to show your love was to leave,

To abandon me on broken glass and crumpled dollar bills,
Face in my palms so I can drown in the tears,

So I can drown in the words I never told  you and never would,

Despite the thousand poems that should have told you…

My only hope then is to print a book and make it in the industry,

Make you look at her and tell her you knew me,

That you fucked up and lost the one person who knows you,

Your fears late at night, the trauma you’ve lied about,

Your chocolate milk and licorice life.

The best favor you did me was to break my heart,

So irreversibly that now I can’t stay in the dark

Without my mind darting to you, to your touch,

To the honey velvet voice in the phone…

To webcam sleep sessions in the dead of the night

When you fell asleep in your room and I played you the songs,

And sat quietly waiting for you to wake up…

When you called me on my birthday and told me you had her,

With no regard to my soul or my heart, anything at all,

You told me nothing matters but her and you’d forget me.

That was the best thing you could do for me,

Break me, glue me, and break me again,

Over and over and over again, night after night,

Day after day, lost on your heroin days,

And yet I stayed faithful and true,

Argued and fought for you until you turned and left,

Until you never even wished me the best

And proved I’m just like the rest—desperate…

Pathetic and hung up on a man that never even knew

What he did to me… but they got away and I stayed,

Year after year until five went away and I was hooked…

The most damaged of them and I never even knew.