CREATIVE WRITING CATHARSIS: Elvis Costello Song

Photo Courtesy of Associated Press/Charles Krupa.

By Barbara Crowley
Chameleon Creative Writing Blogger

I always believed there would be a day that you would wake up and realize that letting me disappear was your second biggest mistake.

Second of course to erasing me.

I never realized it was me who would wake up one morning soaked in the puddles of the sweat and regret I had shed the night before.

I had lost you somewhere within a dream, folded into the seams of my storybook nightmares.

You were the one who never really cared

and I was the one that got away…

slipped out of your rust-consumed handcuffs and snapped your chains

You gave me the key.

But I lost it on purpose to prove I would never leave.

Then you gave up on me.

So I broke both my wrists to set myself free

But I was stuck on a loop

tongue hanging out of my mouth, chasing you

Elvis Costello song stuck on repeat

but I kept hitting shuffle to alter the beat

losing on purpose NEVER comes as easy as losing accidentally

so I lost you unexpectedly

like the toy you’d think you’d miss

until you realize it’s been years since you’ve known where it is

You’re squirming somewhere deep in the folds of my brain

drowning in the thoughts I’ll never think again

memories so lost, I’ll never find someday

no lost and found box to find in the grey

and THANK GOD

because I never want to have to recycle you

and I hear you’ve transformed into someone new

and it’s better this way because I CAN NOT miss

a person who does not and maybe did not exist

But how could I have fallen in love with something imaginary

and spend a year convincing myself that something was something we really could be

Catch “Creative Writing Catharsis” when it is published every Saturday.