everyone has a broken heart

the grass is always greener etc

In a hotel room with pin striped curtains I,
call my mom on speaker phone
throwing stones from rock bottom,
she sits in silence with me
We’ve been here before, Stef

At karaoke I confide in a stranger as
a Thai man sings Iris by the Goo Doo Dolls
Unfamiliar faces undermining my unraveling
Wanna do drugs about it? he asks
I shake my ass to norman fucking rockwell and remember I am not Original

A boy I know floats listlessly around nyc
Getting head and waking up in nicer apartments than his own,
I ask why he chases what makes him feel empty and he says that I
obviously don’t understand male sadness
He misses his ex in LA but doesn’t want to get back together

In the back of a car I watch a new couple kiss over the center console
They call me their daughter and I think
You’re nothing like my parents
They’re attractive and young and I wonder what will be the thing they fight about over and over again when they’re drunk and it’s late and they’re bored
Every couple I thought would get married broke up

I’m gonna have a kid I think..that way I’ll clean up my act
I get that text from a vagabond man who has no business being a father
He flies girls from faraway places to his hotel rooms to mind the silence with him
I don’t even want to have sex, he tells me
Then how are you gonna have a kid?

S has a boyfriend though they’ve been long distance for 6 years
Every summer she yearns for the impermanence of insignificant intimacy,
catching glimpses of her youth flying by in the bathroom mirrors of European beach clubs
She watches me disappear behind the bar with a body i’ll never know again and
back at the airbnb I watch her giggle over facetime with a man who loves her

At a downtown club though really a lounge I’m intoxicated with Newness
An Attractive Man tells me he’s 5 days out of a breakup then puts his arm around me
Offended, he asks why I’m laughing
I say that I finally understand male sadness
I walk home and listen to drake and cry and laugh and cry and laugh and decide I’ll be ok

I get home from a long trip where my heart broke in a hotel room with pin striped curtains and
Notice all my plants died
I sit on my orange couch and remember a fight I had here once where I
swallowed another’s smoking lie
Through hiccups I water the leaves and take out my pen and in my journal I write,
What did you neglect while you were being neglected?