DEAR EX-LOVER by JASMINE MANS

Dear Ex Lover

I promise
I’ll stop chasing your memory in my dreams.
I’ll stop bringing your name up over cups of coffee, muffins, and loneliness.

I will marry a man and I will lay my heart on his chest
like red roses on Mohogany caskets
and I’ll have his daughter
and she’ll have eyes reminding me
that God still believes in second chances.
and if she ever decided to love a woman,
i will love bravery down her spine.

I will be reminded of
all the times that we loved,
like there were expiration dates
tattooed on our inner thighs.
If she ever comes home with eyelids
like cracking Levis
and bruised kneecaps
and a heart filled with question marks
I will hold her
like my mother never held me.
I will clasp her face in my palms
like the new testament on judgement day.
I’ll tell her that love is the passion
that allows you to do the right thing,
and that no woman can play coaster
to a half empty heart.

And if she ever feels as if she is alone,
as if she is a hand-me-down
pulled out of the depths of mummy’s closet
I’ll remember your name
and I’ll mumble it under my breath.
and when she asks me what I said;
I’ll tell her I know what it’s like
to drag a woman out of a cold war
and then being too worn to clean up the battlefield
that it has made of you.
I’ll tell her that your heartbeat
sounded like gun shells tripping over battered cement.
I’ll tell her that i know what it’s like
just to want someone to remember you
and that some women are as foul
as expired men in produce aisles
and that apologies
are like oxygen masks on a hijacked plane.
Forgive yourself
before you EVER forgive the person sitting next to you.
I’ll tell her to never regret loving
in permanent ink,
and that scars only give you stretch marks,
something to gossip about
and that hearts and stop signs are fraternal twins,
lost in open roads and hollow chests.

And if my daughter’s mirror
ever looks unfamiliar
and she’s too embarrassed and prideful
to run into mummy’s arms
I’ll pray, that she has friends
with hearts filled with thousands of fire flies
who are not too cold to pray with her,
who will tell her to stop looking
for the light at the end of the tunnel
and find God in the darkness.

If my daughter ever walks in my house
like shattering glass,
I’ll tell her about you.
I’ll tell her that we hurt
like c-sections birthing dead babies,
and that we cried together,
and we prayed together,
and we laughed together
like our smiles were the only ones
that mattered in this world.
And that we hurt like women
who loved women,
who loved people that did not love us.



Dear Ex Lover,

I hope my daughter never knows
what a goodbye kiss feels like..
I hope she never knows what
“I’ll see you later.” really means.
I hope she never memorizes the dial-tone
of a last conversation,
because a broken heart feels like
poisoned butterflies taking their last flutters
in the pit of your stomach


Dear Ex Lover,

I hope my daughter never
bears her soul at a poetry showcase
with her first love sitting in the audience.
knowing that the hands she’ll use
to applaud her with,
will be the same hands
that will never hold her again..