Leather and Lipstick

It started with a glance at an innocuous name tag across a crowded college classroom.

Your name, Alex (in chicken scratch), stuck in my mind as you flashed a golden smile.

I memorized your details.

Brown hair hanging, shining as bright as the sun, with light green eyes fixated on my lean frame.

You glanced up and down, measuring me, approving, envying my blue thong, smile never fading.

The beginning of the unknown.

You look at me now from a mostly empty record store.

It smells of mothballs and you (cinnamon and mint).

You want me to notice you, I can tell.

You want me to turn my head and acknowledge your existence.

You want the past or a version of it.

Or maybe you don’t want that...

Maybe you don’t recognize me.

I was number 41 after all.

A mix of men and women. After all, you couldn’t afford to be picky and be a slut too.

That’s what you are, a piece of shit slut who broke me.

Not completely, but enough.

You convinced me to marry you, to finally settle my own heart on something solid.

Then you dumped me for Kerry, your married male boss.

You convinced me despite my suspicions that you would never cheat, the hickey was a bruise from hitting the door.

You had your arms around me and kissing me with that soft, soul sucking mouth of yours.

I could never breathe or think when you did that.

I accepted it even though the voice in my head though I was an idiot (my crazy shit spewing voice. You know, the one that tells you to jump off a building or fuck some random stranger. A voice you know all too well.) It even told me to stop being a dumbass.

To grow some ovaries or balls or whatever and be a strong, smart woman.

But your lies hypnotized and your poisonous tongue crawled into my essence.

I was putty and you were a prodigy toddler, sculpting and crafting me into a fine powder.

It was good before the cheating and arguing, before talks about marriage and a future full of promises and fluffernutting (your word, still no idea what the bloody hell it means).

It was nonstop sex under a brightly lit fake pine tree, cuddling when the cold seeped into my shithole of an apartment.

It was talks of adventure.

Of petting wallabies in Australia and moose watching in Canada, you told such sweet tales of traveling and such sexy stories of a train and the naughtiest girl.

It made me jealous, but hot (I’m a bit messed up apparently).

These were the good times, riding in your cheap red crackerbox car (despite rich parents) and listening to your weird experimental pop lists on a cracked MP3 player.

We didn’t dare take mine. You could drive the interstate and changed lanes like it was going out of style.

I was always nervous just getting onto a ramp.

But you, fearless.

Big bulky sunglasses hiding your red glowing eyes, the sun coming up behind you, making you ethereal is burned into my brain.

“Alex” I gasped as I always gasped when speaking your name. It was my favorite spell and the most cursed word in my lengthy vocabulary.

“Kate,” your voice didn’t need to be that melodic, that spellbinding.

You shouldn’t have been that spellbinding.

God knows you didn’t use your voice to tell me the end of our love story.

You let social media take the fall.

You let a lifeless and dispassionate (never a word to describe your dirty mouth) site be your goodbye letter.

There was no debating, no arguing.

I gave you five minutes of space to do your work and you decided to give me the boot.

There was no messaging or vague reasons that we all know means it’s me, not you despite your assurances.

There was no talk, no begging to be friends so it’s not awkward when you run into me.

Oh, no. The site informed me that I was single, that you were single.

That five minutes after being single, you were with him.

You two looked happy, a beautiful couple. Pudgy porker with a thin anorexic fairy.

You smiled and he had his arm around you with no concern.

I looked at his profile, catching you in half truths. He was your boss, but no wife.

I cried and felt like absolute shit. Sick as a dog due to a mixture of your treachery and a nasty bug called flu.

I couldn’t watch anything but Home Improvement as I thought about your toxicity.

I moved back with my parents and went on with my life.

Got over you, got married, and got your face off my mind.

You look at me again and I talk to my friend, intent on ignoring you.

Now I can feel the heat, the burning on my face from your malicious glare.

You ended it and yet looking at you now, standing with your leather jacket hugging your delicate shoulders and your lipstick as red as the burns on my heart, your stare tells a different story. Angry, scarring, hot to the touch.

You can tell your fable maybe it’s a story of a wicked witch and a dainty princess. You’d always be the princess, no one would argue with that.

Your mother was your wicked witch before I took the bitch’s spot. She made you model thin with barely veiled insults and quick diet bars. She made you the beast I ignored to find the beauty within.

You walk over to my turned head, I can hear your thick heels clicking and clacking on the ancient hardwood.

I can hear your breathing, deep and sultry.

I can feel your heart pounding, vibrating the cracking walls in this suddenly dingy space.

You walk with speed, but I’m faster.

I excuse myself while my friend calls for me in confusion.

He doesn’t see you, he wouldn’t know you anyways.

You’re a part of the past I buried along with my innocence and naive nature.

A new Kate that is lightning fast with jackrabbit brilliance.

She walks, not runs, but you run to catch up.

You try to catch up after a decade.

A decade of forced ignorance, one of peace and turmoil.

You want me to stop.

Maybe you want to apologize, maybe you want me to say I’m sorry for torturous panic attacks and depending on your light so much to cover my darkness.

Maybe you want me to apologize for being a ditzy child.

Whatever it is, I don’t get the chance to want to hear it.

I see the car, I dodge.

I figure you do too.

I look back when you scream at me, not able to understand your words, only angry clearly written on your face by a fantastic master of irony.

I saw the car drive me past me I thought, but I’m instantly wrong.

I get out one word: Alex.

You’re struck, not by beauty or a brilliant idea, but by a Buick.

The screams echo on this closed street, bouncing off decrepit buildings, crumbling and tearing themselves down without the aid of human interference.

Blood runs everywhere and I hear the loudest shriek.

It shakes me from the shock and I see his face twisted in agony.

Looking at open green eyes.

Your red lipstick smudged, your leather now clinging to a lifeless corpse.

That’s what you are.

No longer a piece of shit or an angel sent from Hell to complete the destruction of man- and women-kind.

No.

You are now leather and lipstick on a dirty rotten corpse.