slight of hand

loving you made me forget how to play the game. my hands practiced at card tricks and illusions of affection, grown clumsy with disuse. with no more need to hide. or perhaps i let myself forget because i no longer wished to play games & make a living on con-artist's gold-painted love & glass-diamond promises. you stole me from the casino & took me to a home. you undressed my sequins & feathers and clothed me with tender embraces. & i know i should thank you. you taught me that softness is enough on its own. that there's no need to douse myself in sugar-water, no need to build myself armor out of rock candy or a castle out of sugar cubes. that who i am is worth loving & savoring my salt and earth fills you. i should thank you. but i hate the way my raw veins look under the sunlight. i hate the way my skin feels without its spines. my audience no longer finds my slights of hand convincing. because when i pull the queen of hearts from my sleeve, she always has a note written on her back in your handwriting. "you are my queen. my heart is yours." then they see that i'm an imposter. how could someone who's been loved like that really believe in illusions, since i have lived in a world where real magic exists. i didn't believe in magic before the way your smile made parts of me melt that i never knew existed. i didn't believe in magic until you thwarted all of my attempts to disappear. you found all the trap doors in the house & nailed them shut. you held me in your arms and said, "if you're going to leave, my love, it must be through the front door." i didn't believe in magic until your hands were gentle & you taught me that scars can be nothing more than rivers, arrows, dotted lines pointing me towards healing. you promised me that the only sugar you needed was the shape of my lips as i said "i love you." & the sound of my voice saying "there's nowhere else in the world i'd rather be."

i wonder what you need now that i'm gone. are lesser women offering you artificial sugar. do you sigh with sadness when you see decks of cards? reminding you how you built me, but i was just a house of cards. how i crumpled. how your magic wasn't enough to keep me, to hold me together. how my salt & earth are now tears in the dirt. do you have pity on people who are still convinced by slights of hand because you realize that the whole trick is that it was never in your hands in the first place. how my hands are no longer in the right place. in yours. living without your smile is eroding places inside of me i had forgotten existed. even without you here i can't unhinge my rusted heart to swing back into the circus of colorful insincerities & sugar-water rain showers. because of you, i'm more. i'm less sweet & perhaps more honest. i don't miss the game or my top-hat full of tips & skipping-rabbit heartbeats. i have no regrets. you rescued me & i like to believe i fed you for a while. never forget what kind of love you deserve. remember ... if she doesn't make you forget you don't have wings then it's probably just gold paint & glass diamonds. and tell her that you are waiting around for real magic, because now that you've tasted it... you'll settle for nothing less.

10/12/17