You come at me with your faded grin,
with your black, dirtied snowed curls,
and you ask me to make a series of ticks,
of pragmatic answers, of rights and wrongs,
of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s,
to determine how my eyes judge you,
how my brains see you,
how my entrails feel about you.
You come at me with your bound-up neck,
with your fuzzy grey Zegna garnishes,
and you ask me to believe that love is a package of ticks,
of SWOT analyses, of same-same glittery bribes,
of Fris, Sat’days, and Sundays,
and not of princesses and peas,
not of princes and frogs,
not of caresses and tease.
I come at you with my faded acquiescence,
with my dry-iced deferred pistachio stare,
and I grouse a thousand hidden wedded pricks,
of TV dinners, of bedside movie theatres,
of sleep before the clock strikes 12,
of ringed side-by-side mannequins,
prepping for war so quiet so stealth,
in the sun-up ruins.
I come at you with a practised cheer,
with my camouflaged, rouged, creamed masquerade,
and I whimper up your 360-degree review,
with an itemised receipt of my surrender,
to the vacuuming of my reveries,
to the crystallisation of my mirages,
to the scrubbing white of my dusk,
to the hollowing of my bedraggled soul.
Little Tragedies in the City 
>This is yours, right? Some really fantastic lines in there. Well done.
>Oooh I am loving this! Love the descriptions and the attitude, awesome work.
>stay until the clock strikes 12, when magic enters, and bedraggled souls can roam free, until the morning light
@Blaiser and Lola: Yes, I wrote this yesterday because I was feeling really down about my relationship and marriage. Thanks for the kind words. *Hugs*
@ranfuchs, that is a beautiful & genius reworking of my words for a solution. I often live in the "magic" of the night too. Sometimes, that's really the only time "bedraggled souls can roam free"… reminds me of a Hemingway short story, something like "a clean, well-lighted cafe". Beautiful, one of my faves still.