cruz

october 22, 2010: i was writing a poem. remember, cédric, New York has an Itch? it was maybe 10:30. it was maybe even 9:30, around now.

i was on my lovely, expensive olive couch of crushed velvet. 

resin cruz used his key for the first time.

he had disappeared. the shopkeepers, the deli owners, the bodega workers, the laundromat people...they all told me he'd gotten his ex pregnant. it tracks with breakup sex. so he'd had to leave new york to get a social security number, get a better job...

...and they all told me he was a lowlife and that i was intelligent, well dressed, clearly had money, and far too good for him.

anyway. this literally has nothing on what he did to me in april of 2012, but. i just reread my posts over there because i was killed in 2012 (yes, literally) directly because of him. and. wow. 

so he turned his key. in my lock. 

he'd been living under the table at his parents' with mice and cockroaches in fort greene. 

he refused to use the key and have a home. i told him we could scale back: not be boyfriend and girlfriend, but friends or FWB, and i'd move my jewelry studio into the living room so he could have my second bedroom.

he started hitting me for loving him.

so he was really addicted to me, my body, the sex. i'd thought he was screwing around but it wasn't that. his mom was forcing him to get back together with pregnant priscilla because i'm deaf. she hated me for being deaf from the very start. his stepfather loved me. i got to drink beer and watch football games.

she said being with a deaf woman (to my face) was socially unacceptable, especially for the son of one of mayor bloomberg's pet projects.

so

he came

in and my heart stopped at the rectangle of light 

and the black silhouette

my MacBook in my lap and a poem bleeding purple 

so i closed it and set it onto the floor

and david ushered himself in and changed my life forevermore:

he'd been so lovely, reading my rape autobiography

marveling at the pictures and the melody of how my broken bird sings

but that night, while priscilla dandled their toothy baby on her knee

he was slipping and sliding subway cars closer and closer (get it?) to me

...and when he got to me his eyes glowed by the light of the moon 

and he whispered, i'm sure it was a whisper: "i can't wait to find out if raping you feels even better

than making love to you,"

and the fight that ensued

the fury in my eyes, the snarl of my lip

the struggle, the fists

only made his eyes 

well, more and more besotted. 

like mine when i think of your poetry--

--see the difference? 

*   *   *

i do not, i do not want to think of those eyes that night--

--they were orbs of pure delight