Sex and Murder Magazine

By Tyler Knight

A girl I dated for half my life
just got married.
We have not spoken for equally as long.
I know she is married because upon impulse,
I typed her name in “search” while
on a social networking site I never visit because
last weekend was her
birthday.

Kitchen knives sewn up inside my gut.
She most likely gives me zero thought at all.
Her husband, a younger looking, much more handsome
version of me.
We were together forever. It ended badly.
I was as bad to her, as she was to me.
Probably worse.
No hope of it lasting, this I know logically.

Yet.

It’s Summer, birds sing for them. Her dress is white,
they are both smiling by the Sea.
A snapshot of perfection
and the people are cheering
like a God damned commercial of how life
should be lived by the beautiful people.
and I am an anonymous coward-fuck.
for peeking in on their world.

Telling myself that I should be happy
or at the very least
not care fools no one
especially myself.
I’m not thinking, “I’m glad she’s happy.”
It’s a curiosity of what the right man at the right time
looks like.
Well, now I know.

It is not what I expected.
That God damned photo.
And closure.
I do not know what I should
have expected.
The movie reel of our memories edited over
as if I never happened.
Except as a warning. A lesson.

My current woman whom
I love dearly asks me what’s wrong.
My face betrays me
I see my old life lived in by another man.
My old dreams are now dreamt by
someone else.
The woman I planned our kids names;
her eyes glassy with rapture by another man.

I sit alone in my car, and I think
how blessed with what I now have
and the woman who now shares my side and loves me
when I do the exact same things to fuck up
this relationship also.
She too deserves better.
I know that one day
she’ll move on as well.

My lament, tearless;
blunted through the passage of time.
sears my soul all the same.
Why do I do the things I do?
I always know when I make poor choices
but it never stops me.
The same fuck-ups over and over.
Aren’t I clever?