This piece of me is tangled in his soul,

I try to pull away but it’s stuck tight.

Amputation might be the answer here

but I hate letting parts of me go,

they might take root and grow into new me’s.

I will turn a corner and bump into one –

that would be downright startling!

I’m not sure quite what I’d say…

Hello, bit of me I left behind –

sorry about that, but it was important.

I couldn’t spend the rest of my life

stuck fast to him, dangling along

behind, flapping in the wind as he

went on his merry way. Hello bit

of me, did your life turn out happy?

Is he good to you? I see he let

you free for the afternoon at least.

He never did that for me,

he clung tightly and wouldn’t let me go.

This piece of me is tangled in his soul.

I’ve tried to make sense of it,

straighten out the strands to find the beginning,

tried to slide it out gently so he wouldn’t notice –

the only time to do this is when he’s sleeping

so he doesn’t turn and see me at it.

He doesn’t get mad, it’d be easier if he did,

he gets tender and loving and the piece of me

burrows deeper not ever wanting to

stop believing in him.

He is a nefarious man! I am thinking

a little WD40 will do the trick.

I will put it on my grocery list.

If he sees it I will tell him it’s for

a squeaky door. He won’t want anything

to do with that. It will seem like I’m

asking him to do me a favor and fix it

and he doesn’t like being told what to do.

He doesn’t like anything that resembles a

commitment

and yet he can’t just let me go.

This little piece of me that’s tangled

in his soul has no desire to be free,

wants to lay wrapped in his soul

unappreciated, unloved – it doesn’t care.

If it can be close to him, it’s enough.

It’s a part of me I am ashamed to admit I have

and yet I do. It’s part of me, all right,

a part I can’t talk any sense to,

a piece that stubbornly clings to him

even though the rest of me has

decided there’s no future here.

Perhaps it’s right. Perhaps that little

part of me is the only bit of me

that knows what’s what. Maybe I need

to stop judging the situation by outside

influences and just listen to his siren’s song.

Sure, he can’t give very much of himself

but maybe I don’t need more. I can

pick up pieces he lets fall. I can

collect them and build them into something

like a perverted jigsaw puzzle.

Like looking into an antique mirror,

the glass wavy and cloudy,

thinking you see things that aren’t there,

ghosts of people who looked in the

mirror before you,

and ghosts of people you could have been

if only you had gone a different way,

hadn’t tangled your life up with his.

I am looking into a dream world and he

looks very good when you put him in a

dream world.

It’s the real world he has trouble with.

He has problems trusting people, that’s all.

Even me,

who has stood by patiently with my arms out

waiting to catch him if he falls.

He’s not the kind of person, though, who

could ever bring himself to admit it

if he actually fell.

He would pretend he wanted to suddenly

be prone in my arms.

He wouldn’t say thank you.

He would brush it off as if it were nothing,

as though I had no right to assert myself

into his actions.

This piece of me is tangled in his soul.

Sometimes I think it’s bigger than the rest of me.

Sometimes I think the part that’s left is

no bigger than an M&M – plain, not peanut –

just a little insignificant dot of color

and the important part of me is there with him,

holding him up, watching his back,

trying to fight his battles for him

(he really hates when I do that!).

Underneath all those onionlike layers

is the part of him that loves me.

I see it sometimes when he relaxes and

doesn’t know I’m looking. I feel sometimes

as though I have received it in a

memo from hell. It burns a hole through

my pocket when I slip it in there so

I hold it with an asbestos glove.

This love will tangle in my lungs and kill me.

He pretends he doesn’t need it,

but it’s all he has.

by Cher Bibler