Sorry Doesn't Butter the Biscuit, Sorry Doesn't Walk the Dog

By Adam Stone

Wyatt has got scratches on his corneas
From all the men who got lost in his eyes
And died trying to claw their way out

The day we broke up
He told me there would always be a special place for me in his heart

I had been hoping for something a little more spacious
With a little less black

Elvis was my twenty-first birthday present
Boyfriend so out he had a windchill factor
Eighteen year old student of Baron Munchausen
Majoring in revisionist history
A parasitic Pinocchio
Every time I caught him in a lie
His dick looked bigger

He seduced me with broken home stories
His mother, the cancer that closed his father's throat
A wicked stepfather with a taste for Elvis's forbidden fruit
I was the prince with the glass wallet
That fit perfectly in his pocket

I spent two years and forty-two lovers
Expunging him from my credit report


Sam wouldn't touch me with the lights on
Jason kissed me like I was the exhaust pipe on an idling car
Russell told me
That I was the most beautiful imaginary friend
That he had ever locked in his closet

I never felt so ugly


Mark was the first lover who made me feel beautiful
He told me I weighed so heavily on his mind
He couldn't sleep anymore

I started buying groceries in bulk
Seasoned my steaks with weight gain powders

I would watch him flipping through my old photo albums
Caressing my twenty-four year old cheek
Smirking at my seventeen year old sideburns
His love was better for my posture than milk

Yet I saw every smile not flashed in my direction as an act of treason
Counted seconds during handshakes and hugs
Soon our late night phone conversations grew so tense
Fibre optics grew brittle
Cracked under the weight of our words

Wyatt developed a passion for pesticide ingestion
He skipped town to follow Phish

Elvis got lost in someone else's enchanted forest

I never heard from Sam again

Jason carved cuneiform across his arteries
Dabbed bleach behind one ear
Ammonia behind the other
The darling of the gay goth scene

Russell and his wife lived blissfully ignorant ever after

Mark
I'm sorry I used the cement in our relationship
To build a bombshelter strong enough to survive our past
Instead of laying a foundation for our future

I'm not sure at which page in the photo album
I lost my ability to see the present for what it's worth