You Better Move On
for Cedric Scott

moving on for me
is not just-like-that
is not as easy as pie

not when the sky
has fallen in upon a love affair

want to linger, assess it,
go back over every footstep

over what, just a day or so ago
was so full of promises

we had made such profound plans

all the plans, like plants, like palms
so soon uprooted

sky fallen in, roof fallen in
upon the dining room table

unashamed that I am crying and crying
that I am weeping still

that I am making poems of ink and tears
of a mixture of these

after you have invested
what you have invested
in the affair you're in
in love and marriage

would you be able, easily,
to up and move on, were you,
God forbid, today or tomorrow,
to split up

dare you say that my love is/was
less significant

because it has not
existed as long

because it has existed weeks
and yours has existed years

have I no right to want her back
to want to continue what we started
where we left off

have I no right to want to go back
to her neighborhood

I know though that our breakup
that our breaking up

is tied to the other men in her life
who have let her down

whom she, most likely,
has let down also
like she's let me down

thinking, in all these cases
it is- it was
the fault of her father,
two brothers, two X-husbands
now me

all these men to hate
who have hurt her
whom she has hurt

worse than she is aware


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2012
9:34 p.m. 10.01.12