The Ones That Get Away

Disingenuising your experience, your love
a burning candle on a tea pot at one end
that always ends badly like our own: you must remember
the hotel—the party—freezing as you knew you’d fake it
again as you rode the bronco they rolled in like the best divorce lawyer
in the city of Chicago, though we were in Darlington, pretending

we’d always had fun: I wasn’t criticising your methods
as much as you thought, rather, keeping them guessing
until you saw through it all so I could prove my point, that was
self-defeating—but doesn’t the universe need it: more bulls;
less roll. Where are you now? Are the handles still hot? The best
I’d danced with in a lonesome place, ones
we always found ourselves in as we dragged
us through such nonsense just to avoid the reality of the cold.