Lucky Bug Magazine

We are not together.
I want you to be happy. I mean,
I left first. Long enough ago
that I want your life to overflow.
Too full of glorious now to leave room for long-hoarded, faded thens.
Like mine: winter evenings spent by firelight, summers by the firepit
stuffed with shared smiles, no space for senescent sadness.

Why then does the picture
gut me? Shards of glass, stabby-knife-sharp, sliding up my belly,
entrails spilling out.
Emotional dilation and curettage.

Filled with a somnolent, sun-sodden landscape of old town rooftops.
Framed by that thrown-wide window. Warm and welcoming,
with the merest hint of hastily-exited covers.
And the phone, charging.

Are you suddenly a rockstar, then?
One for your glitterati gang / one for the ‘gram?
You. So cleanly-curated. So obsessed with editing.
So you didn’t accidentally miss that oh-so-intimate hint.

If I were to take a rumpled, sleepy, Sunday morningy bed-selfie,
and – too cosy to care – not crop carefully,
it would be strewn with the casual disarray of his den
overflowing with boi-business
(we have had long enough to learn the lexicon of our shared love-language).
But I was always so disheveled. It means nothing.
Not for one second would I be sending you secret signals.

Like this new sign language:
Unlike your usual morning #coffeeoftheday
with a tepid semi-skimmed smile I never saw
(only ever full cream for me).
Or out with mates with mates, your unheld hand
the only one free for filming.

You are happy – I decode your cryptogram
With unsettling ease.
And my thumb wants to settle on the heart
But my heart won’t let me.

We are not together.
Why then won’t you leave me?

A lover of sandstone and chocolate, Pam Martin-Lawrence lives on a small island with collections of emotional support plants, local fossils, and book-boyfriends – plus a long-suffering partner. She is currently querying her debut novel while working on the second. For relaxation she practices Swedish and Norwegian, and she writes poems, flashes, and short stories. During 2023, she had a poem and a short story published and has had two short stories accepted, both for publication April 2024.