After the Breakup,

she calls me & calls me again, drops off bags of my useless things in the apartment building lobby, tearfully asks Is this the kind of breakup where I buy you flowers & win you back? She parks her car along Monroe Ave, says through the phone You don’t get to decide when this is over. She calls my mother next, tells her I’m off my meds, DMs Rebecca & misspells the word bizarre. She texts me from a burner phone pretending to be a stranger named Kimberly, who wants to know if, five days out, I am ready to date again. Meanwhile, my mother wants to know What fresh bullshit is this? & Emily thinks I was raped, but no one is clear on the definition of the word, & anyway I was warned about the consequences of slander. For the first time in months, I eat a big, juicy burger. Okay, I eat half. I count azalea bushes on the walk to campus, tweet about finding the beauty again. My classmates each lay a hand on my shoulder & tell me to find my voice. Later they will say that my poems are much more effective when she gets to speak in them. Something about perspective, something about taking responsibility. For two years I will beg to be believed. For now, after the breakup, she parks her car again, hangs around town like a fever. The blood starts to pool behind my eyes. She leaves flowers outside my door.

Natalie Eleanor Patterson is a poet, editor, and instructor from Atlanta, Georgia, with an MFA in poetry from Oregon State University. She is the author of the chapbook Plainhollow (dancing girl press, 2022) and the editor of Dream of the River (Jacar Press, 2021), and has work featured in Sinister Wisdom, CALYX, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She has received awards in poetry from Salem College as well as Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominations. She is Managing Editor of Jacar Press and a PhD student in poetry.