She told you.
Not once. Not quietly.
In the kitchen, in the car,
at 2 a.m. with the lights off.
You can recite every IPL score since 2011.
You could not recite one sentence
she said last Tuesday.
Her memory was the problem, apparently.
When she was quiet, you said cold.
When she spoke, loud.
When she cried, dramatic.
When she didn’t, heartless.
When she asked for you, needy.
When she stopped asking, distant.
Read the list again.
Not one word describes her.
Every word describes
what kind of day you were having.
That is not her instability.
That is observer error.
Then you said calm down,
the one phrase in history
that has never calmed anyone down.
You tried it anyway. Twice.
She said the same thing for three years.
Slower each time. Softer each time.
Finally in a voice you could call crazy,
because by then you needed the word.
Notice what that word does for you.
It closes the file.
It makes you the calm one,
the good man who was simply left
by a woman who “changed.”
She did not change.
Your picture of her did.
Somewhere tonight she is laughing,
finishing a sentence
that nobody interrupts.
And you are telling the next woman
about the last one.
She was crazy, you say.
They always are.
Run the numbers.
Different women. Different years.
The reading changes every time.
The only constant in the data is you.
She was never the error.
The observer was.
You weren’t listening.
Not once. Not quietly.
In the kitchen, in the car,
at 2 a.m. with the lights off.
You can recite every IPL score since 2011.
You could not recite one sentence
she said last Tuesday.
Her memory was the problem, apparently.
When she was quiet, you said cold.
When she spoke, loud.
When she cried, dramatic.
When she didn’t, heartless.
When she asked for you, needy.
When she stopped asking, distant.
Read the list again.
Not one word describes her.
Every word describes
what kind of day you were having.
That is not her instability.
That is observer error.
Then you said calm down,
the one phrase in history
that has never calmed anyone down.
You tried it anyway. Twice.
She said the same thing for three years.
Slower each time. Softer each time.
Finally in a voice you could call crazy,
because by then you needed the word.
Notice what that word does for you.
It closes the file.
It makes you the calm one,
the good man who was simply left
by a woman who “changed.”
She did not change.
Your picture of her did.
Somewhere tonight she is laughing,
finishing a sentence
that nobody interrupts.
And you are telling the next woman
about the last one.
She was crazy, you say.
They always are.
Run the numbers.
Different women. Different years.
The reading changes every time.
The only constant in the data is you.
She was never the error.
The observer was.
You weren’t listening.
