If I can love myself...

He's gone. Though before he departed, he was kind enough to write a tender yet terse note explaining how he felt it unfair. Unfair that I could not have all of him while he had all of me. Unfair that my life was put on hold while he lived his away from me, without me. Unfair blah blah fucking blah. 

I'll tell you what's unfair, Mr Holier-than-fucking-thou: that you get to choose for me, while I have no choice at all. I'm happy to have half of you, happy to have a quarter, an eighth (and I'm certain you cam and wank with plenty and at every opportunity, know the spunk is still dribbling into your boxers even as you say your first hello of the day to me), happy to have any fraction you deem fit. For how long, I cannot say, but at this moment it feels like forever. I would have taken the teensiest slice forever.

So much for self-respect.

I cried at first. Felt sorry for myself - and why not? We never even touched, yet he made me cum like no man ever has. Never ever kissed, yet he made me feel good about myself like no man ever could. Never ever fucked, but I will carry the children of our many magnificent masturbatory unions to their fullest terms. I love him, I need him. Present tense. Future tense. Perfect tense. Past unconditional. 

*

This is later. Not later this year, this month, or this week. Later this day. Before noon. Before the cock crowed, the crow cocked, the crock cowed. Less than an hour. Forty-six minutes.

He's gone and I'm over him. Torrents of tears fell on him. Splattered. Splashed. Soaked. He began to fall apart. Skewed. Sagged. Sogged. Tore. Disintegrated. Skin dissolved and fell away. Within, there were no bones, blood or organs, only spindly twisted sticks, a loosely-tied scaffold that had given his flat photos and even flatter words three dimensions. And within that scaffold, sitting on a little stool, wearing her tattered prom dress and twisted tiara, and manipulating strings and wires, waving sticks and an embarrassed tentative hand, her cheeks flushed and eyes anxiously half-averted, was... 

Me.

I'd constructed this pathetic papier-mâché Punch, made this pornagraphic pop-up puppet, manufactured this maleficent marionette, with the subtle skills of my own dexterous hands and mind. It was all me, all from my imagination. It reflected my needs. Was made of my expectations. Built from my insecurities. My aspirations. My shame. Brilliance. Corruption. Insight. Filth (I'd once asked if he'd piss on me, for fuck sake. He'd - of course - said yes, he would). When I searched through the remnants, the wreckage, for any sign of the man behind the masquerade, there was none to be found. Again the prom queen meekly waved, knees pressed primly together, a deep blush on her porcelain cheeks. Eyelashes bashfully fluttered; mouth wryly twisted. Simultaneously, we smiled, raised eyebrows, snorted derisively, bit bottom lips. I laughed. So did she, then threw down her sticks, untangled herself from the strings and wires, left her Miss Muffet tuffet, and tore off her pristine knickers. She raised her silky dress to her waist, squatted over the squalid remains of her erstwhile virtual lover and steadily and steamily emptied her bursting bladder.

Yes, he's gone. And I've moved on. I was in love, but only with myself, a fact that gives me great solace: for if I can love myself, with all the stuff that I know about me, then anyone can.