An Ode To The Many Men Who Visited Her Halls And Corridors

Running severely short on inspiration worthy enough to immortalize my words with, I stumbled upon the rather prosaic, pedestrian and overcooked topic of my (nonexistent) love-life. 

I sat with my faithful old cup of coffee on this brutally cold night in Wisconsin, and pondered over the dry, shriveled appearance my heart had assumed in the past three years, possibly due to what a medical man would term as disuse atrophy. There had been no room for my heart in my system off late, and moreover, it certainly didn't occupy the same high rank in my hierarchical delegation of power and control over important life decisions anymore. It sat alone, in my deep, dark mediastinum talking to itself and humming sad old love songs that it was beginning to slowly forget.

Occasional visitors had come with their feeble attempts to resuscitate my decaying organ, some through my brain, and some through a more meat-and-flesh route. Some came dressed in suits and fancy ties; some in t-shirts so tight that it seemed imperative to stare at their chiseled chests. Some blanched in musky Bulgari colognes, and some bathed in Axe deodorant. There had been those who spoke in monosyllables and were testosterone driven beyond the point of managing logical thinking, and those who spoke in sentences so flowery that I was left feeling emasculated. Let's not forget the ones who came with silent unspoken promises of a happy future and candlelit dinners, but left my poor heart battered and bruised like it was just with Mike Tyson in the ring. And those who found it appropriate to have an hour long conversation solely about their magnificent yet diabolical ex-girlfriend on a blind date, and also those who turned up high as kites for coffee. Of course, there had also been those who jumped the gun and went ahead and proposed marriage in a matter of a few hours of having spoken to me, and also those that I had sorely yearned to share a white picket-fence with, however brief and perfect that desire was allowed residence in my mind for. There had been married men and fathers of baby girls who had left me red-faced and disgusted with their icky propositions and immoral ways, and also beautiful strangers who had tugged all the right strings and pulled me into those supremely intimate dances you would only dare to dance when on holiday alone in a faraway land where no one knows your name.

I had led a very interesting life thus far, and I wouldn't change a thing that I'd experienced. Yes, there wasn't a textbook romance or an ideal relationship at the moment, but that was fine, I told myself. My situation, so to speak, was honestly anything but that, but even then, I decided to take this moment to thank all the men who had come and gone, visited my prairies and my farms, climbed my mountains and sang my songs, and tattooed their initials on the very heart that I spoke so poorly of at the start of this word-vomit.

Some day, when I would be older and hopefully wiser, with graying hair and crow's feet, a published book and a doting partner at my disposal, and a child that would be mine to love and raise, I aimed to retell all these stories, of all these unique men, so that the world might know where my life got all this colour from. You might have bruised my ego when you walked out of my life (or got thrown out), but you certainly left behind some interesting stories to tell!