He told me
about the women
he had slept with
when we were apart.
He was honest.
And I had asked for it.
He told me stories
decorated with leather
and violence
and anal.
Girls
who relaxed in sweet drunken smiles
and enveloped him in warmth.
Lazily tumbling
through bedsheets,
glowing in the acid hue
of the outside lights.
Girls
who wouldn’t ask him
to pick up his dirty socks.
Or turn away from him
on a shared mattress.
Girls
who weren’t sad and tired.
Girls
better than me.
Who had lеarned to turn their trauma
into adventurеs
for him to stumble blindly through.
Instead of wallowing
in their brokenness
and breaking everything
in their path
as penance.