Receipts In Jeans

(Revised)

The world of the brokenhearted
resembles a theater for lovers enamored
with simmering red lipstick imprint
stains on men’s white T-shirts,
and cologne baked into women’s hair
as being too close for comfort strikes a nerve.
I’m staring into seclusion, shifting furniture for a receipt
that had its explanation of a purchase I’d planned to promise.
After dark, the fans flame faint traces of pot
spilling through the park’s atmosphere,
warming globally over the swaying maple trees,
and holding our tongues from articulating our insecurity.
We sincerely don’t know a goddamn thing.
We tussled with our parents,
insisting we knew more than we did.
Mom told Dad we had to learn it on our own.
But aimless meandering while sipping
an espresso from Mojo’s consumed
the inconsistencies we overcame
in becoming who life had shaped us to be.
No matter the season,
couples embraced hands and fit
into each other’s arms.
A guy dropped to one knee,
and his partner feigned that she hadn’t seen this coming.
The coward in me shivers with trepidation,
wondering whether I’d had the guts to ask Amy
what I needed to know, the answer her father surely
wouldn’t want to know.
I had nothing to lose and everything to gain,
so I planned to make it official.
But she made the move that I should have made.
Amy told my parents we were getting married
because she found the receipt for the ring in my jeans.
I knew I should have washed those jeans.
Damn jeans.
I’m a lot of things, been called a lot of names,
but none fit better than your lover’s title.
If to anyone, it matters how you see me.