Like a Scab for an Extra Rub of Scrip, 2025

I keep thinking love is a job I forgot to quit

clocking in with a broken watch

and a card with more holes than paper to punch

calling it devotion

You didn’t love me back

you stood there while I emptied myself

like that was the point

like that was the show

ta-da!

I didn’t fight you when you hit me

I remember thinking

this must be what calm looks like

a man standing still while weather happens to him

I am a tired excuse

for me still apologizing

for bleeding in the wrong place

for making a mess of your evening

What kind of man learns how to disappear

and calls it commitment just because you know very well

how to spend money and I'm slick with making it

You were always asking

and I was always answering

until the questions ate the room

and the answers ran out

I called it patience because patience sounds holy

and being used sounds like a failure and I was trying not to fail

But you never liked the gallery

never liked the thing that made me breathe

said it took too much of me

as if I wasn’t allowed to belong anywhere but at your feet

I worked for you without wages without praise without even the dignity of being fired

the illusion that endurance was intimacy

I became the caretaker

and caretakers don’t get loved

they get used correctly

or replaced with another man to speak with while the caretaker worked

And now I don’t know

if I’d recognize love

if it didn’t hurt

if it didn’t ask me to prove myself with bruises

and quiet

thinking love should feel familiar

even when familiar means harm

I walked away

not because I was strong

but because there was nothing left to give you and nothing left to keep me there

Now it’s just me and this strange relief

this sadness that doesn’t lie

this silence that doesn’t hit back

I want love that doesn’t need my disappearance to function

I want love that doesn’t clock my hours or measure my usefulness or resent my aliveness

I just know I’m done going underground like a scab for an extra rub of scrip.