The Borderline

 

Awake at 5 AM, the truth of it
Came
From the boiling churning weeks
Of nightmares and sweats-

You didn't control that,
I was the "work friend" (that btw can't see your home)
You liked to jab that in my ear if you "allowed me" to drive you to your car place,
In the ruins you are now building

A long time ago
I started laying a new foundation in those cement blocks
Time, lessons, art supplies,
Crocheting, making, hooking it together, new wiring

Building a doll house comfort you stalked
Inviting you to share a floor of my talents
While you careened around in rumor
Grudges, self pity, vanity, Cruella driving her car

Trying on your pants, "I'm just so thin," evaporated as I thought about
What I'd be making in a soup if I ever got myself free
 My eyes blurring with the stress
Seeing you through another identical bitching year, just like the other bitching years

"I hate this place" was actually your mantra, it's so beneath you, poured like concrete
Only superseded by your blasting exit, reiterating it for everyone to chant, destroy it
When you then named me the source
Of your problems on some formal staircase, descending nude

It makes a lot of sense to go haunt in the basement
There were floors of gifts, favors, money, rides, lessons, time, days
Because you enjoyed making sure you consumed my time
To teach those hundreds, thousands of hours as you looked at the "O" magazine

Once you had me take a year half-off, share "your" position, so that you could fail
Another personal goal
Pointing a finger,  "She insists on going back full time," used me as your ready excuse
Commanding me as if I did break the deal you had insisted upon,


My mother really was my responsibility
Difficult, coming closer to her death, my anxiety real this year
You re-invented yours, trotted her
Out on an imaginary stage, oh the horror, for you. Poor you.

You filed twenty days dedicated to her care
At a San Francisco PHD 5 star hotel, with another guy to
Regal us with in 7 hour phone calls, what finally got me- it's just so easy for you to spin
Cobwebs in your attic,

Someone took care of my family through these antics
You pretended to be maternal, mucho, mucho, mucho
What made me decide that was enough- the stressing you claimed
Versus the actual health I had

The one thing I can do is art, did you celebrate an opening to do that for me?
No then you would be stuck here alone-I deferred in the name of friendship
While you happily got out a list, silently and privately
Transferred out, because, after all, you deserve a new happy life

You have it. Lucky charm.
But there isn't two ways
Not this time, you decided to try me
Convict me, stage the evidence, your elephant has a memory

That karma is yours.
My Legacy will be found in the hundreds of hours of your classes laminating,
Teaching them, going to get supplies at Michael's
Arranging, dying, crafting, watching a daughter hear your salacious sex tapes

My contribution to your welfare
Your health, will be nourished by the holiday dinners you certainly bulldozed
With a imperious demand for the timing and mom's effort to bag
What you've decided you are taking home, again no bread.

A bouquet of Gerber daisies
In exchange for abominable impropriety
A broken easel, yes, that would be your gift
She trots out a list or a record, or uses

A mind to recount and discount, calling it  a psychology
To shade, destroy, take to pieces, vacuum meaning
Dissect, sweep the floors, cross process- she calls it-
A friendship where one of us

Got to sit for two weeks over and over again protesting
That they said nothing, nothing, it was just a regular meeting
Her highness with the gavel aiming
At creating the worst situation possible, wanting servile ingratiation

She puts a lie on a paper
Framed by a sister- another super liar,
Hires a lawyer, she might use for a scarf
And gets hers.

If you weren't already
A work of artistic fiction
Someone would invent your character
To roam the halls of a truly ungrateful Pottery barn Silicon Valley nightmare house.