Lovers of My Life

Oh the lovers of my life, oh how you changed me. You continue your labors as young artists with fevers. You passed me on, like a baton in a relay. It all started with you; I was so new to this world. A fresh clean canvas hungry to become your dream. It felt almost perfect, until your hand faltered and you made a small mis-stroke in designing me. It caused you such frustration. Until that moment I felt loved, beautiful and worshiped. That absent minded stroke you made became my fated seal. You yelled and screamed, and threw me down. You tore me all to pieces. You left me on the curb in a dank Paris mist. From everything to nothing, in the most quick of an instant. You left me behind in a dark alley, leaning against a dirty trash can. Covered in rats and crawling in filth, the beauty you saw in me was now ruined. I had done nothing, I came to you a blank clean canvas, yet your mistake has caused me now to suffer so much.  My error in trusting your words, the adoration in your eyes, the electricity in your touch, and the years of calling that pedestal you sat me on home.  I dared to live in your world, for just a moment too long. You promised such wonderful things, endless love, devotion, and pedestals. Yet in that instant I was nothing more than a reminder of your failure. A reminder of your vision, your obsession, that your carelessness had destroyed. You left me behind that day, my canvas frays blowing in the rain. You couldn’t escape how close you came to everything you envisioned. The thoughts of me, what I had been and what had become of me, didn’t fade as the distance grew between myself and you. You turned back to the ally, a time or 2, or 3.  Just to turn away once more, not talented enough to repair me.

A passerby, a dingy man, the kind that frequents alleys, caught a glimpse of the mangled mess of me that you left aside the trashcan. He didn’t see the broken, torn piece of garbage that you had made me. Instead he saw the strokes poetic, that you spent so long painting into me. Suddenly inspired, he looked carefully around. “How could such a treasure be left?” He wondered softly allowed. Assured that not a threat was near, one that might take me from him, he placed me cramped beneath his coat and ran off while nobody was watching. He pulled me out and set me aside and I took note of my new home. Everything was so different inside, from the life I’d always known. I wondered what my life now was, how my days would flow. I caught a glimpse out the damp window of the only man till now, I’d ever known. You looked so happy with your new clean canvas as you hurried off back home. All thoughts of me now long forgotten as you moved on to your latest conquest.

This dingy passerby, that now was all I had, pulled out diamonds and champagne and decorated me elegantly and grand. I watched him as he stared at me, realizing fairly quickly. As much as he stared at me, I knew that it meant nothing. It gave me neither peace, nor comfort of any kind. After so many hours of you doing the same, I understood the artist's mind. For he was not seeing me, or even the colors in me you painted. He was seeing his own creation and trying to figure out how to use me to make it.  The diamonds and champagne were fun, but over as soon as it all had begun. He tried to sculpt my canvas taters, into some new skin for his classic marveled stone. When my material couldn’t cover his grand ideal, again I was garbage. Into the street I went, even more mangled than when left by you. This time tossed upside down, behind a broken dresser, hidden from view. Winter now it was, and it was markedly colder. I lay there broken through the night. Knowing I had done no wrong, didn’t make anything right. Thinking about all the people that I had met over my life. They had always smiled fondly, saying how pretty I was. They teased you that if you ever let me go, they would be there to snatch me up. More words that people say, I realized with a shutter. For all the declarations, the gallant and chivalry. Here I was on a cold Paris night, broken behind the dresser.

The champagne had been poured on me and never cleaned away. The sticky bubble alcohol softened me more and more each day. The next to pick me up, discovered in me a spongy mess. He thought if he cleaned me well, I might just be useful yet. This fellow was no artist, he had no creation to make of me. Was only thinking practically, collecting useful things.  You know that cool thing that you found at that estate sale? You had moved it from house to house for years, yet never found a use for? One day you finally gave it away, thinking how silly you’d been. The next day your partner brings something home that would have been perfect to hold it. It’s gone now after all this time of it just wasting space. Well that was my fate this time too, when the fellow finally gave me away.

At least he had a little heart, I was not condemned to the trash. Or thrown in an old junk pile hidden while seasons would pass. He put me casually, in an old brown box. Along with some candles, a few old picture frames, and some slightly chipped teacups. With a thud I felt myself dropped on the concrete outside, of a second-hand store's doorstep. The sign said closed for the weekend, and it was late Thursday night. I sat for 3 days in that cardboard box. I absorbed the candles smell as they melted onto me as I lay there protecting the teacups. Monday morning came for me and my cardboard carriage opened to light. The frowning woman staring down did not see any reason for delight. She pulled out a few picture frames and scraped one with her finger. The wax that had melted all over us stubbornly stuck and she dropped it causing it to splinter. “Check this box Adele, see if you want to save it. It looks like nothing but a mess to me that has nothing of value within it.”  By now I was growing used to being treated as ugly and broken. I hardly flinched at all when the words she said were spoken. Adele came over to peek inside and I felt relief when her face lit up. The hopeful feeling so quickly fell when her hand only half lifted me up. She reached around to pull out the teacups that clinked around. Delicate and fragile, hardly a chip could be found. Turns out my overstretched, misshaped and sprawling presence, had kept the wax from reaching them. They were safe yet I was more damaged. “Don’t complain,” the candle said a smaller and flattened version than before. The box was closed and back outside we tumbled into the trashcan. I closed my eyes too sad to cry, I had finally met my end, check mate, that’s match, was there a point to any of this? In the end I was just an object that was misused, and not valued. Then finally discarded, by man’s indifferent hands.