Rotten tomatoes

To clarify:

You never meant a god damn thing to me.  I mean that.  Whatever I thought was real and good turned out to be rotten like the tomato that you refused to clean out of the fridge.  It was your tomato, I don't eat the yellow kind.  Once upon at time you read what I wrote and pretended that you liked it and pretended even harder that you understood it.  And I would laugh and play along and try to write simple things so that you would understand.  And there we were, under a bleach stained green comforter eating crackers dipped in Campbell's tomato soup.  And you would ask me what I loved about you and I would say your evil grin and your fingers and the curve of your nose; really your grin is lopsided and your fingers fat and your nose is long and too arched.  

That windy spring night it was raining, we were at that bar.  My bar, I call it, and you would claim it to be yours.  We had both been going there on odd days for years, and had never seen each other.  That night you went on a thursday, not wednesday- I don't remember the reason, coworkers or a breakup or music.  And you took my hand and asked me if I played piano with my long long fingers. I didn't but somehow later we were at my apartment, and then right when men decided to stay and play you kissed me on the cheek and walked out the door.

Weeks and months and years later we would still go to my/your bar and still sit in the dim smoke; only when we went home it was to our apartment and you kissed me on the lips and closed the door behind you.  It was a  a singular event stretched over a long long time, taffy syndrome I liked to call it.  And then one day I was ordering my long island iced tea and when I turned around you were caressing her fingers and asking if she played piano.  And I took your key off the bar and handed her the drink and walked walked walked away.

And you didn't hurt me, you didn't because I hurt myself because I knew better.  And you didn't, and you don't mean anything to me.  My regrets include walking away, not from you but that poor girl, the one who also knew better and who also pretends not to.  Someday maybe you'll read something I wrote,  you'll actually read it and you'll understand it.  And then you'll realize that I didn't walk away, you did; that I'm that one, that singular one who got away, and you have to live with that.