Dog on My Doorstep

I stood naked and prone in front of you, while you, fully clothed with eyes closed pushed me onto the street.

You closed the door and what was supposed to be intimate and special was now indiscrete.

Open, wounded and bare, I bled on my own doorstep.

You sighed and threw the scrubbing brush towards my worn hands, as if me being here was not part of your plans.

You told me to clean the cuts that you gave me, so the rest of the street couldn’t see your debris.

I cried on my doorstep while you lived in my home, you dined with my friends while I sat alone.

You would say ‘I love you’, casually, knowing that would keep me naked and bleeding on my own doorstep.

Where else could I go? I had no clothes because you kept them as a keepsake, while I kept the heartache.

You kept all of my photos in a box in the attic, all the time complaining to my friends about me being so ‘erratic.’

For dinner with my friends you kept my chairs and my table, but left me unstable, clinging to the frigid doorstep, because sometime recently you said that you loved me.

You were angry with me when my tears and my blood stained my own door, four years in my cries were far too annoying for you to ignore.

So you kept my house, and my clothes, and my table, and my chairs and my photos.

My existence was the same except for the lack of your ‘love’ I suppose.

Which you took away.

But you made me stay.

On my own doorstep while you lived in my home.

Without your ‘love,’ I found courage to ask you to leave, because I needed to mend and to grieve.

You insisted that it was your house and your chairs and your table and your photos and your clothes, and this was something that I was simply not allowed to oppose, because that would be unreasonable and unfair, and why wouldn’t I let you live here?

Because you were my ‘friend.’

Which meant that my doorstep tenancy wouldn’t end.

Just because your love did.