Love on a String

I should have left
that leech sucking out my soul, for you,
my cyberpunk love — intense, short,
with caramel skin. You wrote fiction
and spoke in poetry. Our first forbidden
kiss sent shocks through me, my tetsuo.
You supercharged my stunted life.

When we met, you wore a string of
paperclips, a punk rock
costume for Halloween. I was fresh
from my nana's
funeral. We lurked
in a doorway with vampires
and Kafka. Even then, I longed
to escape. But that vampire

at home had dug his nosferatu
claws into my back. I was blood-
bound, a puppet-shell girl. You showed me
how to stretch my strings, but alas,
they snapped me
back, a broken marionette.

 

The subject of this poem is actually still a friend of mine. Fortunately, he understood when I went back to my boyfriend, who was emotionally abusive and controlling. By the time I'd left Leechboy, my cyberpunk friend had found another girlfriend. Sometimes, that's how it goes.