Good Girls Aren't Supposed To

a poem

Emma Stone & Ryan Gosling as Mia & Sebastian in La La Land (2016)

A year ago, I wrote an open letter to my younger self on the 7th anniversary of my first break-up.

I thought that anniversary would mark a new beginning in my love life.

Turns out, I had a few more painful lessons to learn.

. . .

---

Good Girls Aren’t Supposed To

Good girls aren’t supposed to
fall for guys with
tattoos on their arms
and rock music in their hearts.
 
They’re supposed to date
fresh-faced, straight-laced church boys
with Bibles in their hands
and solid five-year plans.
 
But nobody warned me
about Hungarian accents
and brown-eyed smiles.
Nobody warned me about you.
 
You had my attention
from the day you smiled
and said,
“You must be new.”
 
You were the magnet 
drawing me in
a little closer 
every shift.
 
And I treaded the
whirlpool 
of infatuation
with gasping breaths

Because I was Sunday mornings
in the choir,
and you were Thursday nights
at the bar.
 
And good girls aren’t supposed to 
fall for guys with
alcohol in their veins
and video games on the brain.
 
So, I found myself a church boy
and I prayed he’d asked me out.
I daydreamed of green eyes
and a sly, sarcastic mouth.
 
But little did I know
he had another girl down south
and I was just a game,
a round of chess to pass the time.

I was a pawn; she was his queen.
Guess who tumbled off
the board
when I forced him to come clean?

It was
a cold, grey day in January
when those green eyes
broke my heart
 
and
Little Miss "Never Been Kissed”
got tired of playing
the good girl waiting.
 
'Cuz while my tears were drying
you left me a Valentine's note,
promising to pick me up
and drive me home.
 
One sip of kombucha was all it took—
one date, one night, and I was hooked.
Two hours of jazz in your favourite bar;
driving home beneath the midnight stars.

We flirted our way through the day,
texting into the night,
not daring to call it by name
but holding on to it so tight.

Like Mia and Sebastian,
we were two lonely hearts
dancing along
through a city of stars.

It was a sticky, sweet secret,
my flirtation with you;
a broken hearts club
for a party of two.

It was ice cream at sunset
in a riverside park,
but I’m a Daughter of the light
and you were living in the dark.

So, in the heat of summer,
I let our ice cream cone
romance
melt between my fingers.

But I missed you every day
like an addict misses her fix.

Yes, I was the one who 
ghosted you,
but you were the one who
haunted me.

Because good girls aren’t supposed to
fall for guys with 
tattoos on their arms
and rock music in their hearts.
 
Good girls aren’t supposed to fall
for guys
like
you.

-	a.l.w.

“Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above.”

~ John Wyeth, “Come Thou Fount”

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