I stumbled into the alley on purpose,
preferring the darkness.
Knuckles bleeding,
incisor loose under my lip.
The stranger I damaged
deserved your thanks,
having taken your lumps for you.

Littered among the trash,
the detritus of the lives
of others,
lay my dreams,
the future I had planned for us both,
our children’s hopes for a nuclear family,
and the shards of trust
you spit in my face
with every lie.

You made the mistake
of using someone
for whom computers
hold no mysteries;
your methods of operating
open to scrutiny,
reported by keyloggers,
revealing multiple identities,
yielding every password,
disclosing your cyber-sexual exploits
and proofs of your perfidy.

Yet in the world of meat and pain
I hold back,
taking my anger to drunken extremes
on the person of a stranger,
instead of the source and cause.
Consider this unknown’s gift –
His lips smashed and bleeding upon my fist,
instead of your lying ones,
the last kiss you will ever get from me.