i'm not gonna write you a love song...

'Cause you ask for it, 'cause you need one
You see, I'm not gonna write you love song
'Cause you tell me it's make or breaking this
If you're on your way, I'm not gonna write you to stay
If all you have is leaving, I'm gonna need a better reason
To write you a love song today

When C and I were "breaking up" for the first time, he threw a lot of particularly nasty accusations my way. He accused me of lying to him all the time, about everything - even what kind of pizza I liked, because one time he saw me eat a slice with green peppers when he knew I didn't like green peppers. I reminded him that it was homemade pizza, and I didn't want to insult our host, so I tried a slice. We moved on. He accused me of talking about him with my girlfriends and giving away all his secrets. I reminded him that since we'd started "dating," I didn't have any girlfriends with whom to boy-talk and secret-share. We moved on. He accused me of plotting against him and trying to get him to incriminate himself. I reminded him that I'm not smart enough to be plotting against anyone, and if he's worried about incriminating himself, then maybe we have bigger problems here. We moved on. Sort of.

"Well, you never write anything about me." I stared dumbly at him, in complete disbelief that it had seriously come to this. "I mean it," he continued. "You say you're a writer. Why don't you ever write anything about me?"

"How do you know I never write about you?" I decided to be cute before realizing - too late - what a mistake that was. He scowled, accused me of keeping secrets from him. "It's not a secret... I just don't show you everything that I write. We agreed on that, remember?" Several times I had tried to share things with him - a few of them even about him, but I guess too obtuse for him to notice - and he'd stopped just short of ridiculing me. Halfway to his credit, though, he'd realized that he'd hurt me and said that he just didn't understand writing. At least not your writing, anyway, he threw in for good measure. That day, "we" decided it'd be best if I did my writing on my own time.

"Still... if you really loved me, you'd write about me." Instantly, I compiled a list of at least fifty things that I "really loved" and had never written about, but I threw in the towel.

"You're right," I said. I looked at him, but it was dark on the porch, and the streetlight made his eyes look like empty sockets. "Someday when I write a novel about naive girls and the hell their older boyfriends put them through, I'll dedicate it to you. Then you'll know that I wrote about you." I picked up the sandwich that I'd made him from the plate resting on his lap and threw it on the ground. The top piece of bread fell off and landed mustard-side down on the pavement, and the wind blew two leaves of lettuce from the top to reveal neatly-folded black forest ham. I walked calmly to my car, concentrating on the thud of my Nikes and the swing of my hips. I thought how I'd have to clean up the sandwich in the morning before we got ants.

When I drove off, I stole a glance at him, confident he couldn't see me in the dark. He sat still on the bench and removed the plate from his lap, resting it where I used to sit, crossing his legs. He held the other half of the ham sandwich in his left hand. He draped his right arm over the back of the bench and took a bite. I knew he was chewing with his mouth open, but I couldn't tell if it was a good or bad thing that I still cared.