A Suicide Poem

I wish she could see me,
maybe ten years prior to now.
Walking down strange streets
with almost strangers  
like nothing less than a king.
Wanting eyes
bouncing off the surface
of one another.
We didnt care where we were going,
but we always knew where we’d end up
or some other cliche like that.  
 
In a sense, I was taking on the world,
and with every small battle
there would be someone there
lusting after me
as much as I lusted after them,
(A man can do whatever he sets his mind to
when a powerful woman resonates with him)
and it never got old,
because we always knew  
there was no such thing as forever.
 
I wish she could see some of that
as I lay here alone now.
Cold and warm in all the wrong parts.
Those dark brown eyes that looked down at me
and whispered “papasito.”
The firm grasp of a buttock
as I argued with a bartender
or a jealous punter,
immediately forgetting that I could ever be angry.
 
I wish I could share some of it
without it sounding so bad,
because it wasn’t so bad.
It was just a different kind of love.
But it would sound bad,
it would sound like a man
pining for his past.
Resenting his present.
 
But fuck!
There are nights like these,
when all one can think about
is what it was like to be held
the ways I’ve been held
and watched the ways
I’ve been watched.
 
She is angry at me,
and that is fine
because I love her.
She says there is no passion,
but there is life,
and there comes a time
when life must be tended to first,
 
And maybe I’m not the man I was,
but I am trying to build a life,
and even though it might not be
the life in which I walked down  
strange streets
like a king,
it is a life I chose
and will honor.  
Even as she looks at me as if I am nothing
while I smile a sad little sort of smile
to myself
knowing just how responsible
we all are
for the versions of each other
we experience.