This poem is about your breakup. Yes, the messy one.

But you probably assumed it was anyway, didn’t you,

you’re so vain you probably thought that it’s all of our collective

fault for not mining deep enough to find the (admittedly)

really rather lovely amethyst deposits. You may not think

this poem is literally about your breakup per se, but you didn’t

need my help to find it pleasingly generic enough that you

could draw an endless web of projections, could say, “oh

hey, I’ve seen those greengreyblackblueishesque eyes

before, that drably portrayed anger, where the poet said

things like ‘dull ache’ and ‘knife wound’, well that was me too”

and it was you, but it didn’t have to be, don’t you get it,

fuck the semioticians who say I handcuffed my own thoughts

the second I stashed them in language, the postmodernists

that gleefully accept my (admittedly) really rather meager

donation to the collective unconscious and mold it into

abstract art and motivations, this poem is about your breakup,

but it’s mine, me, it belongs to me (right?), I’m really rather,

uh, cheesed off about this whole reading and writing thing,

this poem is about J. Alfred Prufrock’s breakup, yes, the messy

one, the one with that emotionally abusive (forget the gender identifier)

that you all know is yours, and anyway, enjoy the poem,

is the point. I hope it scrapes your scabs off, wherever they may be.