Boundaries as suggestions
Like lines drawn in the sand
Washed away by the tide
They mean nothing in the end

How easy,
To rip the unsewn stitch
Or tear the thread of an untold tale.
Often these tapestries,
Tattered and stained with red,
Have experienced one reign after another.

Not evil, perhaps something lower?
An abyss of a person—a counterfeit soul.

Once upon a time she said,

“That’s why I didn’t want to get close, I knew I’d be messy for you.”
…

I met someone,
And you’re so different.
She’s so different,
From you I mean.

In that I don’t have to ask,
I don’t have to beg.
Not a secret shame,
Not something on the side.

It wasn’t until it came so easily that I realized how poorly you treated,
Me.

How do I tell her that I’m terrified she’ll treat me like you did?

How do I explain that when I seem distant,
Detached,
A thousand miles away,
It’s because your barbed wire words strangle my heart?

Threads so perfectly entangled,
Only the sharpest of instruments could separate.
Even had we been careful or courteous,
surely it would have nicked our hearts.

You strip your sleeve and show your scars,
“These are from every battle I avoided.”

I can’t find what it is you despise,
For me,
It’s that you wasted my time.

Maybe it’s your self aggrandizing behavior,
Or the downward spiral into an elegy
Which I cannot stop myself from revisiting.
They say,

“He speaks of you as though you were dead”

In this lies a modicum of truth
Silent witching hours where my dreams are haunted.

The still, dead of night gripping me in terror
As I am unable to determine where the chains that bind me end, and the ones you carry begin.
Skulking through the corridor of my mind like Marley’s specter.

How has it come to pass that the line between elegy and ghost story is blurred in such a manner?