Starting From the End

My love,

Once again I stayed awake all night thinking of you.
I cried that you weren’t next to me in bed then I got angry
with you, with me with the others as if it was their fault for our
situation. That we took separate ways each on their own or with
separate others; that we finally couldn’t manage it.
I don’t believe it. I refuse to accept it.
Although from another point of view it was I who drove things
that way, I who took the final decision, I who asked you to leave.
And now I spend my night before the window searching the
street with my eyes waiting to see you pass in front of the house,
come inside ring the bell and tell me you can’t live without me
and I desperately fall in your arms.
Three months have already gone since we split up I’ve started to
get used to it.
Perhaps I like my life without you.
I see my girlfriends, go out with them, I flirt with men.
I’m no longer afraid that something may make you angry and
you’ll argue with me or it will result in a fight; the long faces,
the nagging, the stupid misery of our common life. I can’t even
endure the thought that we may get into that again.
You can’t imagine how I’ve missed you the way I’ve built you in
my mind: tender, smiling, always joyous, like when I met you.

 

BIO

Tzoutzi Mantzourani was born in Athens – Greece, in 1959. She
studied French Literature and Language at Pepperdine University
Malibu, CA. USA, and worked as a journalist in several Greek
newspapers and magazines until 2009. She has published up three
poem collections and a book of short stories. She has translated
theatrical pieces from Greek into English and is currently working
on a translation of Dorothy Parker’s work in Greek. Her work
has been translated in French, Spanish and English. She lives in
Athens Greece.