SHOWCASE: every time

i saw you slowly slipping its sharp end into your pale arm already scarred

with angry purple bruises and scabs that you are always always

explaining away

you were doing this and saying babe, no, i'd never do that again

i'd never do that to you and now i'm doing everything i said i wouldn't

and i don't know why

but i've got an idea like the time i found a burnt spoon in the bathroom and you said

no, no, baby, it's black from pudding, you know, in those little cups and i said oh

okay because i didn't want to fight

and it seemed so much easier to give up the fighting and leave you behind and looking

over my shoulder every 4 seconds or so until the last time you called and i knew

that sometimes you can't choose your battles

but what about the way it feels to swallow the loss of you every time the seasons change

and they won't stop the changing

what about the way it feels to finally be broken after years of not knowing

that we might have been whole

it doesn't matter just like it never mattered the few hundred here, the few hundred there

the furniture, the jewelry, the guitars gone in some hock shop in deep ellum

why did you do it

what a disappointment to find that you were only human after all

flesh and blood and the way that you fall fall fall off the edge

every time.

• Emily Lubinski, senior