negotiation

i'm watching the sun shriek up
over the horizon,
mulling over
your inability to claim me the way
so many others tried

i refused all but you
so now you
refuse me.

you talk, about restlessness and
the feeling you're still looking for something -

something you won't find
until you understand
what you search for
can only be found within you,
and the rest of us
have nothing to do with it.

you call us contentment, when i ask
if you are happy
where you used to call it love

and i'm screaming this,
sickened
as i watch this devolution

your problem is in front of your face:
it's not that you're not done
looking around for
a better bargain
but that you do not give
even value
for what you possess:
you don't
count your losses when figuring
on next, or "better"

and you know i love you, but
i'll say it straight:
by the time you figure out
you might just want me,
after all your posturing,
i may have become disgusted by the fact
that you call this merely contentment
and do not take what i freely give

you shelve the offer, tell me
you don't know how
to let someone closer in
as long as you're still shopping, you never will.

i'm starting to feel
like the bruised banana you leave
on the counter and won't eat,
but watch it slowly darken
through the week.

you dissect the idea of happiness, and whether
i belong inside
and i'm tired of this weight[wait]
sick of persuading my shell-shocked self
to try

this morning's cold
i'm shivering two hours
of sleep from my eyes,
waiting my shift through to
come home to you, and not know
what to say

so instead i'll go drink beer and shoot
bleary photographs
and on that film
i want to show
the bruised look
of my eyes,
an honest portrait of what toll
i take from you

i won't come home to the cold sympathy
in your eyes.

if you will not claim me,
i will reclaim myself
and fucking piece myself
back into my patchwork life
scraps into a quilt
until the holes are again
made whole