I think maybe I would have liked
To have been loved gently
But I sunk
With broken knees at your alter
Pledged Allegiance to a false god
Who spoke the Old Testament like it was truth
And the hands that were wrapped around my throat
were dipped in holy water
so even in death I was blessed
He will preach
To all the women he has turned into sin
Say -with a soft caress across my check
That echos and vibrates off the walls
Like the silence after a gun shot
“If you love me you’ll do this.”
manipulation comes easy to him
Hand to God
he is your salvation
And no one will ever love you like he does.


- He can’t be your salvation
- Because you already saved yourself

I am seventeen years old
And I’m sitting at the bottom of my tub.
I’ve cracked my wrists open like the windows in my room-
I’m trying to let some light in
I need to breathe fresh air into my body.
this is the only way I know how
I have closed the curtains,
boarded up the doors.
you had a key
And you trekked in mud and pine needles from the giant spruce tree outside.
I pick them out of my hair
And line them up on the side of the stained porcelain tub.
I am thinking of putting out a foreclosure sign in my front yard-
Abandoning these halls and leaving everything but this stained tub behind.
Seventeen is hard and rough,
It had calloused hands and it took things from me I wasn’t ready to give.

- I am twenty now
- And I’ve redone my home and tore out the stained tub

I have miles and miles of skin.
Untouched
I have miles and miles of skin.
Begging to be loved,
Some of it
has been marred
With hungry hands and bruising grips.
Some has been stitched together
With a cool demeanour and practised fingers.
Parts bare scars of a desperate girl-
Looking for a way to feel something
All of it is wholly mine

- this body is my home and I have let many people decorate it because I thought they would stay.

“I want to be a good man”
He tells you with eyes like a summer storm
All roaring thunder and howling wind
“Help me be a good man”
And so you help him

You lead him to the well
You show him how to drink
And you think this is love
You think this is how it grows

“I want to be a good man”
He tells you with eyes like a summer storm
All shadowed intent and a flash of warning
“Help me be a good man”
But you don’t want to help him anymore

You lead him to the well
Try to leave as he forces you to stay
Watch as the blood washes from his hands
And you think this is love
This is how it wilts

“I want to be a good man”
He looks at you and his eyes are red
You’ve long since adjusted to their madness
“Help me be a good man”
But you won’t help him anymore

You lead him to the well
Push him in when his back is turned
Watch him drown as he reaches upwards  
And you think this is love
This is how it returns to you

I died for you once
And I told myself-
I would never again
Make a graveyard out of a garden

- why do I always cut away the flowers to make room for tombstones

You will say thank you,
for loving me like a prayer.
Because you think the only way-
someone could love you was through divine intervention.
You, a girl who is not quite yet a women.
You still think you can make men out of monsters-
That you only must show love to get it in return.
You have not yet learned
That some monsters
Have given their souls a long time ago.
That the blood that they taste on their tongue
no longer tastes like rust,
It’s what keeps them alive.
And he keeps you because
You liken him to godly-
And he hasn’t felt that kind of reverence in a long time.


- he will will take the innocent you wear like a shield and break it down until there is nothing left, not even him.

I can no longer let your sins
Drag me down
I am so tired of trying to learn
how to breathe at the bottom of your secretes
Truth has never been our family currency
But I can no longer pay in blood
I will try truth and see how it feels on my tongue
(your actions have consequences and you never cared who paid them)
It took me my entire childhood to understand this lesson
(I convinced myself I could love you enough that you would start to love yourself)
I was wrong
(every time that you had to choose between yourself and me
I always lost)
Trying to understand that you would always choose yourself over me was a very hard thing to swallow.
(you will tell yourself in the darkness of the night that you both did the best you could)
I am a church of scars and I have one for every time you let me drown alone.
- you will not love me when I tell you the truth