Prompt Night #6 "i’m sick on tenderness, all i want to do is forgive" (April 2025)

 

i’m sick on tenderness, all i want to do is forgive 

i want to forgive the prying of the bottle from my hands and the pandering down to me

i want to forget you walking on the eleven months you had on me like stilts 

I want to forgive the cold nature of your jealousy and the absent nature of our conversation 

i want to forget what it is to have a dirty sink 

mountains stacked like Everest of of every plastic vegan substitution in the book, mounds of mason jars with health supplements from Ashwagandha to Zyrtec 

no scrub daddy, no tele-health appointment, no skin care routine will make severe yourself from my feeble actions

and maybe i’m selfish

and maybe i’m myself 

i want to remember why i went from the carpeted housed to the wooden floors in the first place 

both equally sinister and codependent, 

whereas one needs a vacuum and the other a mop

i’m not built to habitually clean and restore 

please let the room stand as it is 

i’m sick on tenderness all i want to do is forgive 

the carpet was as bad as the hard wood 

the smell of cigarettes waft into the classroom 

a dichotomy that feels as wrong as it does rousing 

and sitting by the pond with you chain smoking feels just as liberating as it did at eighteen, 

while you talk about everything you hate about women 

I clarify, this is why I can’t decipher the type of woman i am now 

or how i might even be one 

because i am not the women you commodify into captions 

and those women have never existed 

i want to forget coming home to walk on the carpet but also to walk on eggshells 

i want to forget the remote you threw at the wall 

i’m sick on tenderness, all i want to do is forget