We Used To Have

We used to have bizarre conversations about who owed what to whom

We used to rebuild the matrix of our thoughts around new principles garned to garnish each others freedom

We used to argue and manipulate for time and for money, life was a game and the object was to get more than you gave

We used to keep score in tears and screams and late night phone calls from rest stops by the side of small highways

Leaving was worth extra so we used to make a big deal out of who left town first

We used to pretend not to know what the other one was talking about when "the game" was brought up

We would say, "what game, i'm not playing a game, you are playing a game perhaps"

We used to look the other way except in times of sickness

Like when you fell off of your bicycle in a city where we had no friends and I scrubbed the gravel out of your hands and you cried, we had to put the game on hold

Or when I overdosed in a suburb of Chicago in a room with no light and I couldn't get it up or get out of bed, we had to put the game on hold

We played for points and for hurt, bloodsport

We should have put the game on hold more often but then we'd be dead

When desperate one of us would cry, let's start over, let's not tally up anything, let's start making decisions for us right now

But the other one would only reply, "you just say that because I'm winning"

We used to have great sex

We'd abuse each other and make each other say things like "I love you, I'll never look at anyone else, I could love only you"

We used to play softcore pornos on a small tv set while we fucked on a thin mattress in an enormous bare room buried deep in Chicago beneath layers of steel and sky

Something was always ratty and wrong about our clothes

We'd go to work but we were faking it

At the end of the day we would meet and walk and remember all of the times we had hurt each other terribly,

Then we'd count up the points