which is more arrogant?

congratulating yourself for admitting your arrogance, or denying it altogether?

a dream about poems.

it was time to take a little break, i think.

i stayed in and stayed sober for a couple of days just to get my head together and try to figure out what i was doing with myself. i was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper when my roommate came in with two large envelopes addressed to me. one said:

PAID.

and the other said:

paid.
paid.
paid.

both in pencil.

i opened them to find a collection of poems. they were clearly written about me and were pretty derogatory. mostly they concerned my outlook on life and it being completely backwards. as i kept reading them i realised they were all quite good.

i was starting to forget about gender all together until you came along and then instead	pick up the pace and wait for the phone you're ready to leave but not too sure spoken under your breath	it's a tidy little scam but you could never keep it from coming undone a bit too self-assured it was a stupid thing to do
i saw you go outside the lines	you said this time was the last	well this one had better be it
and wheeled right through the door it was no big thing as your face abruptly changed and you could not stop	past the speed trap lights all ablaze hit the gas hit that space and then wait for the engine to misfire	all yellow rings and cracked nails you were really a sight scattered and branded tough to believe you really couldn't think anything better to say

it was all handwritten, mostly in little boxes. in some cases i wasn't sure whether they were meant to be read from right to left or top to bottom, but it seemed to work either way. as i went back and read a second time, i realised that many of them were not the same as they were before. some were surrounded by small pictures. they talked about all kinds of things, but mostly about how full of shit i was concerning relationships.

when i woke up i thought about the girl who i assumed had written it and couldn't remember her name.