i don’t remember the first time we spoke,
but i remember the last;

words dripping from your mouth like
a poison you believed i would drink.
and i would have once
believed it too,
i was familiar with the taste by then.

this time was different,
this was the last time.

when your words became laced
in all of the pains i’d ever shared.
you stirred them up and
spat them back into my face,
thinking they would make me bow
into submission.

but i did not.
this was the last time.

i don’t remember the first time we spoke;
how you made me feel
like the most special girl on the planet,
how i laughed and i loved and
i lent you my ear and my heart indefinitely.

i can’t see what your face looked like,
all innocent and young
as we stumbled through a new world together.

i cannot tell you what made me feel
so safe with you,
or why i believed
we would make forever.

but i do remember it changing.

i remember each time
you floored me with your acid tongue,
every tear i cried
in fear of a certain repeat
performance.

how i was forced to predict your every move,
just to keep us
laughing and loving.

how i now look back and believe
i should have seen this coming,
i should have known
it would happen again and again
when i did not leave sooner.

well i didn’t.
i didn’t see the last time taking shape,
over months, weeks, days, hours,
before the moment it arrived.

but i see it now,
and i assure you it was the last time.

its memory is seared in my brain
like a battle scar,
only i cannot close my eyes
when i can face it no more,
for it jumps around my head
like a well-loved record.

but this record is not loved
and it is not broken.
it is filed safely
in the front of my mind
reminding me never, ever to return,
clearly marked:

“the last time.”

you will try to replay the first times
just to show the world
how ungrateful i am, how mistaken,
how broken, how wrong.

but it’s your first records that are broken.
you broke them
with each track you added on top.
and the more you try to replay them
the more scratched they will become.

because i might never remember
the first time we spoke,
but I will always remember
the last time.

~

Author: Mariann Martland

Apprentice Editor: Roseann Pascale / Editor: Toby Israel

Image: Edgar Winkler/Pixabay

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