playing poker

You have a great poker face. I always wonder what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t dare ask if you minded when I bit your ear or slapped you hard on the shoulder, but I hope you notice that I never dig in my nails and I always whisper that I’m sorry. Life teaches all of us lessons. This year I will close my mouth more, take a leaf from your notebook, only laugh when it’s funny, only answer when they need to know. Not everyone has to know your everything.

We spoonfeed lies to each other all day. It is self gratifying really, just jacking off with an audience when you tell me you will leave her and I agree. Small betrayals every time you ask if I am with last December’s shag and I know that means you are too. Silverfish are eating at the pages of that September with every message that I fail to be interesting enough, and you fail to be smart enough. I am not ready for exterminators.

I wouldn’t play poker with either of you. I am sure you would rob me blind, because money comes before everything, right, because as long as you’ve won then you haven’t lost. I have lost plenty: things I will never get back. I think that my shoulders are lighter now. That is a lesson you can both learn.

I reckon you would eat each other alive. You each have something of me that can’t be won at a poker table, can’t be taken out of my handbag when I leave for a smoke. Sometimes in my dreams I leave you at that poker table together. So long as my cigarette lasts it is Schrodinger’s royal flush and both of you have won me, and neither of you have. I wake up before it reaches the filter. Schrodinger’s cat has always been stupid. Everyone knows it’s dead.