You Killed My Gerbil

My friends look at me like I’m inhumane
when I tell them its easy to get rid of stray cats—
shove them into a gunnysack and toss it into a river.
Or when I talk about shoveling up half-digested grass from
a fat heifer after its been
shot and gutted, each stomach hollowed out by a butcher.
They cringe when I talk about the day
you killed my gerbil,
picking him up by his furry, grey tail and
banging his small body against the wall.
One swift whack.
I tell them Smoky had gone crazy,
cannibalistic. He had eaten three gerbils.
He had bit the flap of flesh
between my forefinger and thumb.

I remember one day in the basement of our old house,
scavenging the cubbies in the storage room.
We uncovered your rock collection.
Geodes the size of my skull you had split in half
with a giant hammer to reveal the
sharp, shiny, clear and purple crystals inside.
In the same box I caught a quick glimpse of your other collection.
At first, I thought they were
long, skinny marshmallows.
You told me how when you were younger
you would go hiking with your friends.
You would each take a shovel,
and you would see who came back with the most rattles.
You told me that as long as you snuck up from behind,
you always had plenty of time to slice the snake in half
before he even knew you were there.
It’s always better to slice as close to the head as possible.
Then you would hack off the rattle and bury it in your pocket.
You came in second only once.
I looked up at the rocks, the rattles, your wrinkled hands.
I looked down into the shoebox containing the
few measly, lifeless pebbles
I had begun to collect.
As I clenched a rattle between my palm and my
long, skinny fingers,
I couldn’t wait to break them all open, to see if maybe,
there were crystals inside, just waiting to be discovered.

When my friends give me that look of disgust,
the one I never gave you,
I tell them there was really nothing else you could have done.
Smoky deserved it.
I tell them that I was,
and still am, glad you killed him.
What I don’t tell them is that as I watched you
dig a hole for him in the back yard
the blood still dripped from the two deep
holes in my hand.

College Ruled

I keep you in a green spiral notebook
in the bottom drawer of my dresser.
I don’t ever open you, but I know you’re there.
I can hear you whisper every time the drawer is left open.
I close my eyes and see the thin blue lines and bold black letters
etched into your pale white skin.
Each page of you contains a single sentence,
in your own handwriting,
beginning with the words
I love you because
The reasons on each page are varied, concrete, convincing.
Farther down the page, another sentence in my own hand,
a lie, beginning with the words
I love myself because
The reasons here are varied, faint, forced.
And between the lines, each page contains
A silent sentence, not yet written, beginning with the words
I cannot love you because
The reason is short, simple, always the same.
I know it’s hard to read.
It’s even harder to write.
That’s why I never have.
But one day, I will open you up.
I will hold you down.
I will take a red pen, grip it
tightly in my right hand.
I will press its ballpoint firmly
against the bottom line of your very last page,
and as the pen moves across the page,
you will feel it in your fingers and in your feet.
As I press harder and harder,
it will hurt more and more.
Deeper inside you,
your throat and your thighs.
And you will know that I am writing again.
You will know that
it hurts me too.
When I am finished, the pain will stop.
I will set the pen down on the desk.
I will close you, turn around and place you back in the drawer.
And as the words bleed through to every page,
I hope that wherever you are, you will
walk to a dresser, open the bottom drawer,
And listen as I whisper.
I pray that you will peruse the lines on your skin, as
the words slowly appear, as the bottom line forever reads
I’m sorry