I never felt loved. I remind myself it’s not because I wasn’t lovable, but because I was made to hate everyone who loved me and loathe everything I’ve ever loved. You had to purge me of love to assure you were its only source.

I looked for love in a golden page— learned quickly what it was to feel imprisoned by flesh-– learned quickly I’m meant to feel so tightly wound it’s as if  barbed wire snakes  my skin. I’ve yet to come undone. The serpent is starved for its prey and I let it swallow me whole.
I know I was born to listen— born to obey. The word “yes” was burned on my tongue from the moment I could speak it, recited like a scripture, scorched into my subconscious by a “saint’s” shallow sermon.

Love was never patient, nor was she kind. Love struck without warning. She consumed me whole as the serpent does and spit me out when she was full. To this day, I starve.

Love was pompous. I was nothing but she was the world. No pride of God could measure to that of the saint who loved me.

Love dishonored me with every slice from her tongue. Love was selfish. Love was rageful. She shattered with the lightest touch. She was wicked— a liar. She claimed to keep me safe but my fear of hell was nothing compared to my fear of her. I was the only thing love hated more than herself.

Love recited my wrongs more than my name.

Love says I’m a liar. She says I am cursed like her. Deep down, I think it’s true. Love was fruit grown from a poison vine. Deep down I know there’s cancer at my roots. Deep down I know I rot.

Love only wants me when I’m small. When I’m afraid. When I’m alone. When I’m malleable. Love loves me when she is the only thing I have to love.

The love I know is violent. She is brutal and unforgiving. Love killed me with her first touch.

As I speak these words, may the dead borrow my tongue and tell their stories from the grave. I no longer lust to lie by them. I want to live and live loudly— let my voice linger as I leave, if not from my tired throat, than from the ink of my pen. I may be rotting but my words are immortal.

I am alive.

If the sun can shine so shamelessly, then so should I. And I, as she, shan’t somber to save your eye.

I am blinding.

A rose, draped in her dainty dress, can make a man bleed— thorns sharp beneath her scarlet skirt tail, his fingertips dripping to match it.

I am brutal.

I have seen the sea swallow strangers whole—suffocate them beneath her shimmering surface. She roars. She rages. She’s rough. And if she can reap her revenge with her gentle waters rippling with sapphire; if she can balance anger and allure, then so can I. Her grace is violent—her beauty fatal.

I am soft, but I am rageful. I am calm, but I burn with hellfire beneath my skin. I am silent, but my throat is raw—my voice tearing it red, ripping its way to freedom.

I was born in a rose field-
taught that the world was made of thorns,
and to live was to pierce the soles of my feet.

so I remove my shoes and dig my toes into the ground-
I’d rather scar than be sheltered

I was raised in a wildfire-
taught that words were made of flames,
and to speak was to blister the buds of my tongue

so I coat my throat with gasoline and swallow down a match-
I’d rather burn than be silent

The edge of my eternity begins with you.

My love, I lulled you with lyricless lullabies, sheltered you in a sheet of stars, yet, in your sleep you still speak her name. "Inferno," was it? You always were a pyromaniac.

I furnished you flames to tame winter's teeth, and yet, you still use them to burn me. How can you pour that boiling blackness in my bloodstream and dare to call it love?

You leave coal-like clouds swirling stormily in my lungs and the taste of smoke to scorch my tongue. Still, my throat is raw and red from coughing up ash and blood, still you call this torture love, and, I believed you.

Tell me, do my mulberry scars entice you? Those marks mingling with my skin of moss and morning glory; you put those there. You made a hell of my skin to rid me of the blue-green, beryl-shaded "blemishes" that provide the very breath you waste, only to build a factory to pump more poison into my lungs. I can taste the tar on my tongue.

My love, as you tear at my being with your careless claws you seem to forget the fact that you need me, but to me, you are meaningless.

Where I was once a sanctuary of life and beauty, you have made me a battlefield- a cemetery of living corpses craving to leave behind bombs and bloodshed, to cure their heart wrenching homesickness and to fall asleep in their lover's arms.

Why must their precious rubies mingle with the ashes of detonation? Why do you **** each other when I have provided you with my harmonic grounds as a home? Why do you raise your children to believe that dying is an art and death is an escape?

My love, I cannot understand why your knees are pained and purple from praying to the angels when you dance so divinely with the demons that you have created. You deserve each other.

Don't you see that you are burning me alive? Can't you smell my cooking flesh or see the charcoal clouds smothering the sky? How can your seeing eyes be so blind?

My love, my death is yours, and if I shall burn you shall blaze beside my broiling bones.

Fair goddess, strip me of my wings
And cast my body to the sea

Atleast then I become the rain that kisses your cheek-
the morning dew that brushes your ankles-
the snow that rests upon your raven lashes.

For as Icarus envies the sky for embracing the sun, I envy these things in their gorgeous simplicity

And yet,
they dwell oblivious to the fortune they posses-the gift of touching you

At times, I find myself yearning for you.
A craving becomes a hunger,
And a hunger,
a starvation.

Shall I pray for a cure to this sin?
The way my collar aches for your kisses-
Your breath,
Hot against my throat

The way my mind wanders to where your hands could trail-
trickling down my skin like the heaven's rain

Am I evil to believe your touch is god?

Love, If I shall pray, I pray to you.
For your hands heal my lonely flesh

And, Lord,
if this is a sin,
make me burn.

Take me to hell and back-
Set me on fire and bless me a godly insanity

For you I'll burn again and again-
hotter than the sun,
Longer than infinity

If insanity is truly a blissful ignorance,
then take my mind so my heart can be free,
set it on fire and gift the ashes to the wind.
If I shall burn, then I burn like Icarus,
euphorically and foolishly in love.

she wasn't his world.

no, to him, she was so much more.

her heart was the sun,
bright,
golden,
shining on even the darkest of days
and bathing the world in its gentle warmth

her eyes were the sky,
deeper and more infinite than the sea
and bluer than the finest sapphire

her cheeks were the constellations,
dotted with dark freckles like stars
against her rosy skin

and she was the universe,

the universe and infinity,

infinity and everything beautiful between the tips of its star-speckled wings

she wasn't just his world,
she was his everything.

pour fire on my hands just to see if I burn
cut rubies from my flesh just to make sure I bleed
because though I've a heartbeat beating on
I'm not sure I'm alive just because that I breathe

Her dark pupils
were surrounded
by a raging silver flame
swallowed by a wave
of cerulean blue

It was as if each shade
swirled into one whirlpool
of exquisite beauty;

The soft petals
of a field of cornflowers,

The electric flash
of lightning during a storm,

The sparkling surface
of a star-stained river
rushing to join the sea
—
A sea that made it difficult to stay above the waves