Love Poem: Forty-Five Minutes and I'M Way Ahead of You This Time.
Jeanmarie Marchese Avatar
Written by: Jeanmarie Marchese

Forty-Five Minutes and I'M Way Ahead of You This Time.

Thirty minutes later. Two a.m. and I'm still here, I haven't forgotten......




Thirty minutes, tears are racing, creating clock hands that point to the edge of my chin,
trembling, my bones point only to the end and you, you're more than


thirty minutes late.



Screaming, I'm slashing my heart to bits, forty minutes now you've been screaming.


Forty minutes later, you've broken, me, I'm well aware of what happens to mothers..


postpartum...


and I paid for you, I paid for you for twenty-seven months and forty-five minutes


late


is only slightly too much for me to


bear.




You're not accepting this, your eyes are popping, Dear, there's blood dripping from your
glances and for


seventeen minutes and 17 days I've been twisting us into nothing while you've smiled at
me, I've been writing the truth that will shut you down...


you're illiterate, you're criss-crossing my statements into lies and my letters are
running from you...


they've been running for months now, back into my mouth to feel the safety of my tongue until


I kiss you


forty-five minutes


late.



Your steps are tick-tocking and Edger Allen Poe couldn't have saved us, underneath the
floorboards at night while I feel the insanity of time...


attack


what's left of me,


you're not doing this this time around, you're late and I'm trapped inside Tuesday, but
it's March now, Dear, and the years since we first kissed are counting themselves to four,
I'm serious about the edges that I've been sanding past midnight, I've saved the sawdust
for you


so you can eat the corners of me


next time your mouth opens, I've saved


myself


twenty-seven months


and thirty minutes


late


but I figure, as the words dance, frightened, on my tongue, at least I'm here


at least I'm thirty minutes ahead


of you.