I.

As I was reconstructing my brokenness,
             after you had laid hands on me and reduced me
             to a sniveling closeted claustrophobe,
a good friend of mine, who wheeled cement
around the city as an occupation,
offered to encase you eternally in his product,
to freeze your shamed body forever in concrete
as revenge for my wronged soul.

But I replied with a bitter twinge,
“No.
“I don’t want anything interesting to happen to him, ever.”

II.

And further along in my recovery,
a friend of mine, who had hurt many people in his time,
              and who had once overheard the God
              deciding his damned fate with the Satan,
offered to add you as one more bloody name to his list,
as it would be now weightless in his present doom.

I pretended to consider, then replied
that I did not want anything interesting to happen
to that boy, no not ever.

III.

And one day, sitting completely healthy
on a bench with my gypsy acquaintance,
and spotting you coming out of the Grocery
with tonight’s dinnermeat held in hand,
she leaned and whispered to me slyly
that with her magic she could shrink you
down to the size of a discarded bottle cap,
so that I may wear you as a medallion around my neck,
and as a warning to all my future lovers,
“Betray me not.”

And I laughed, and nearly began my old recitation,
and barely realized it when I’d answered, no,
that you were my affection forever.