Swinging Soliloquy

[ellajam]

Hi, Tom, plenty to chew on, this hits so many relationship points it will take me a while to absorb them all. I liked the way I had to stop at "mascara" and restart in a different gender, then the hanging of locks led me down a cancer road which continued to the end, when I had to change back and restart again. Here are a few notes.

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you. Nice switchback on how who loves who.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; I don't get the semicolon, either grammatically or as a pause.
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more. An interesting immaturity in a mature poem.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you, I can't yet get why the pulling was not considered a good thing.
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face; Again an odd semicolon, what follows is not a sentence and the two lines provide the pause in content.
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true? A beautiful line that transcends this distinct situation.
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm.
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope...
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud.
tectak
2015

Thanks for the read, for me this has lasting power.