90s Boy

by Jasmine Neosh

To hear you talk,

you were mostly an accident

 

skinny legs in a pair of questionable bluejeans

a growth of beard to conceal a nervous jaw

 

you shot me a look that said

“please don’t make an example of me”

 

a look that said you’d been chewed on

 

hoping to appeal to my Florence Nightengale complex

 

there’s nothing hot about the way you take off your clothes

 

you peeled away the t-shirts

and offered yourself up shaking

a nervous kid in a man’s musculature

given to wandering off too easily

30 years old wearing 15 awkwardly

 

I don’t know whence this fascination

I have with the miserable

 

why I’d want a man

who wears whiskey for cologne

 

why when the party slowed

I crossed the room to the kitchen

where you were standing

so helpless

and vulnerable

 

and I decided then and there

to let you break my heart