A half-life is the time it takes for something to decay to half its original value

I once had a relationship with a poet. A real, honest to God poet. I think we worked because our writing styles are completely different. Me and my Hemmingway-esque memoirs and him with his floral and verbose language (Hemingway is currently spinning in his grave over me turning his name into an adjective: a superfluous part of speech he despised). The poet was, and still is, very complimentary and supportive of my work. He's one of the few people I've shown my writing to and he loves it, simple sentence structures and all. That means a lot coming from a real, honest to God poet. I don't know if I'd still be writing otherwise.

Of all the artists I dated, he was the only one to incorporate me into his work. I have a love/hate relationship with his first poem about me. It was written right after we broke up two weeks before my birthday, which would be right around now. He removed my dedication in a later version because a friend told him my name took away from the meaning of the poem. I still haven't forgiven him for that. He knows this. The poem is framed and lying against my couch, its resting place since I bought my leather reading chair close to a year ago. My copy still has the dedication.

A month ago he sent me another batch of poems. He said he had been working on new stuff while thinking of me. I sat on the e-mail, afraid of its potential Pandora's Box status. Last thing I needed was to be immortalized in an angry-as-fuck sonnet. I imagined an Italian one: two quatrains about how much I suck followed by six lines of how warmer the north is compared to my soul.

I have a healthy and vivid imagination.

I finally opened the e-mail this week, and had he not expressly informed me that I was the muse, I never would have known. My blonde hair did not resemble a "raven pendulum." We never ran down the train tracks and tagged boxcars like he wrote. And frankly, I would never be caught in a pair of Levi's.

I don't know what I was looking for, but I was disappointed that I couldn't recognize myself. Was he speaking in metaphors that I could no longer read? Most likely. I would love to see myself in something other than my jumbled and discombobulated thoughts. My half-finished sentences. My half-lived life. I would love to see myself in something beautiful for once.

Just, uh, without the raven hair reference. I'm still a blonde at heart.