poetry

Ex-Boyfriends

by Kim Addonizio

They hang around, hitting on your friends

or else you never hear from them again.

They call when they're drunk, or finally get sober,

they're passing through town and want dinner,

they take your hand across the table, kiss you

when you come back from the bathroom.

They were your loves, your victims,

your good dogs or bad boys, and they're over

you now. one writes a book in which a woman

who sounds suspiciously like you

is the first to be sadistically dismembered

by a serial killer. They're getting married

and want you to be the first to know,

or they've been fired and need a loan,

their new girlfriend hates you,

they say they don't miss you but show up

in your dreams, calling to you from the shoeboxes

where they're buried in rows in your basement.

Some nights you find one floating into bed with you,

propped on an elbow, giving you a look

of fascination, a look that says I can't believe

I've found you. It's the same way

your current boyfriend gazed at you last night,

before he pulled the plug on the tiny white lights

above the bed, and moved against you in the dark

broken occasionally by the faint restless arcs

of headlights from the freeway's passing trucks,

the big rigs that travel and travel,

hauling their loads between cities, warehouses,

following the familiar routes of their loneliness.