i hope you never stop regretting me

A: "It’s funny, I was able to do all those things while we were together." 

B: "yeah, but you loved me [that's the difference]”

Catch me in the underpass playing chicken with a school bus 

I am organizing a group outing to see gone girl 

I am listening to Melodrama and sobbing in my Subaru,

then eating cake for breakfast immediately after.

I am painting my face with clown makeup, as I rear end someone  

on Christmas Eve after dropping off your gift

call it cliche, or instant karma, but

the impact still leaves less damage than you

I am dismantling our relationship in our head 

most of it is left in a small drawer in the kitchen 

next to a jar of pushpins and double A batteries

did you really think you could uproot me so easily? 

It was always so easy for you to leave.

When I surprise you at your work, and we have a steamy 

tryst in the car off Bluff Road

the thing I savor the most is the way I get to hold your hands again

as you eat me out

I am screaming with the windows down listening to Black Sheep, I am

booking a rage room for myself

(am I doing this right? Am I winning the breakup yet?)

I am crying while watching The Little Mermaid (1968) by Ivan Aksenchuk 

Soviet animation that leaves me blubbering

it’s the real story - not the bullshit disney version.

She gives up her tail for a short life of pain,

she loses her voice in pursuit of some ungrateful man

who, in the end, claims he loves her like a sister. 

She becomes seafoam, and I sobbed and wanted to scream at her

she gave up the ocean, her family, her future, 

for someone who didn’t even care that she existed.

I am crying while I watch the Muppets Christmas Carol 

specifically during the “When Love Is Gone” song

I hope you never stop regretting me.

You are paint peeling off a stairwell, you are

a staircase that leads nowhere.

I am sick of trudging up and down the steps

in hopes of finding something new and pearlescent 

of finding anything worth my time. 

Cain is a writer from Portland, Oregon and has been published in Same Faces Collective, Prickly Pear Magazine, and Call Me Brackets. She recently graduated with her Bachelor’s in English and writing and is looking forward to a lucrative career path of Gay Barista™. She loves writing poetry and experimental fiction about loser-core women that are definitely not poorly disguised projections of herself, no matter what people are saying.