artistic license

you can take your ironic detachment,
your artistic license, your universality,
and shove it. it’s such a cop out.
like you don’t have feelings,
like everything you write is purely
in the service of art and contains
nothing of your emotional truth.
I call bullshit on that.

you say you never broke
a girl’s heart, that no one
ever cared enough
to cry over you. well, now
you can cross that off
your fucking bucket list.
congratulations! so glad
to be the one that gave you
that experience. oh, wait.
you wrote that in a poem,
which means it probably
didn’t even happen, it was
just more words you said
to get a certain effect, to please
or trouble or engage your audience.

you can try to hide behind
your artistic detachment
all you want,
but I know how
to read between the lines.
the problem with that is
that maybe you don’t even realize
what you accidentally said.

so – got it, check, nothing
you wrote was about me;
I’m delusional
again. now I can go back
to critiquing your work
purely on its merits
or lack thereof. our literary
romance aborted,
we can go back
to being friends.
as soon as I get over my
trivial little broken heart,
everything will be fine.