Inhalation by Puma Perl

Your mother really did a job on you,

said R, noting my panic

at unanswered text messages,

my tendency to think anyone

who didn’t respond

must be dead or disabled,

my inability to separate

feelings and actions

 

My cataclysmic thinking,

he called it

I understood why

he took off,

although it wouldn’t

have killed him

to say goodbye

 

I even understood

when he hooked up

with the girlfriend

of a younger friend

I don’t know what

bothered me most,

her age, or his betrayal

 

Wait a minute…

I’m lying again

I understood nothing

except his need to leave

once he recognized

the nature of the damage

 

He wrote me a letter,

said he’d call

Luckily, he never did

I might have answered

 

Love isn’t about bandages

or alcohol poured

into open wounds

It’s not even about

understanding

Just clean up your mess

and let others

inhale and exhale

without direction

or critique

 

Control your breaths

and leave everyone else

the fuck alone.

Photo credit goes to Dina Regine.

Puma Perl is a widely published poet and writer, as well as a performer and producer. She is the author of two chapbooks, Ruby True and Belinda and Her Friends, and three full-length poetry collections, knuckle tattoos, Retrograde (great weather for MEDIA), and Birthdays Before and After (Beyond Baroque.) She is the creator, curator, and producer of Puma’s Pandemonium, which launched at the Bowery Electric in 2012 and brings spoken word together with rock and roll. As Puma Perl and Friends, she performs regularly with a group of excellent musicians. She’s received two honorable mentions and one first place award from the New York Press Association in recognition of her journalism and was the recipient of the 2016 Acker Award in the category of writing; she lives and works on the Lower East Side.