"I kissed a feminist once",
he says, face flushed blotchy, something heavy resting on his shoulders
maybe
“I kissed a feminist once,”
and everybody laughs
“she was cold as ice,” he says
and he doesn’t mention how I turned
warm beneath his fingers,
heated up like embers
and reduced his bed to flame and ashes
“God was she mean,” he says
but he hasn’t forgotten the time
I told him to be kind to himself, to
purge the poison from his veins and
scrape the smoke from his lungs
“I love you I love you I love you”
I said,
“please love yourself too”
“I kissed a feminist once,”
he says, to loud guffaws,
an elbow in his side
and he doesn’t say “her lips
were the softest thing to ever brush
my collar bone”
he doesn’t say “she made playlists in my mind”
or “she covered me like a blanket”
or “her teeth on my earlobe ripped me open and scattered me across the sheets of her twin bed”
he doesn’t say “I loved that
storm of a girl,
I loved her heavy at 4am I loved
her like pennies
at the bottom of a fountain
like memorized freckles
I loved her like depth perception
like opposable thumbs
I loved her I loved her I loved her”
and instead he shrugs
that heavy thing off his shoulders
and shrugs the feel of my lips
off his chest and he says,
“she was a crazy ***** anyway”
- Lily Cigale

I always believed scars were so beautiful,
until I became one.
A walking, breathing, talking scar - an unchanging reminder of what was and what shall never be again.

I became the scar reminiscent of our love- or rather my love because you were the definition of unrequited
and I used to like that about you - your unwaveringly selfish nature, I used to accredit it to your self belief but then I realised you got that from stripping away mine.
Bit by bit you became who you were by chipping away at pieces of my soul.
Catching the dust of all my dreams and beliefs in your hands and then sifting through it to get what you needed.

Some days you needed a lover.
You needed the heat of my hands raw against the planes of your back- which I had studied in such a neurotically engrossed manner-that surprised even you.
Other days you needed a slave, bent upon raw knees to serve your every whim
and not in a ****** sense because you made it clear that I was repulsive to you most of the time.
No,
you needed someone to serve you and worship at the temple that was your being. You needed a women to be enslaved to your love. You needed to be served and ushered and elevated with no emotional connection. You needed an unchanging commitment that only served you.  

You see, I was forever trying to be what you needed and in that attempt-that feigned attempt at what I used to believe was love, I lost myself. Wading through parts of you that you didn't even care to understand I lost myself.
Raw on my knees.
Wading barefoot through your soul.
Between the sheets- crawling towards you milimeter by milimeter only for you to move further each time.
Tracing the planes of your burning back.
That's when I lost myself,and became a scar. Evidence of all the times you hurt me in a marvelously unflinching and unforgiving way...

All of which I realised when I was destitute.
You see you used to be my home but then the season of our love expired and you threw me out and as I walked the streets of my new life, navigating what it meant to exist without you, I had an earth shatteringly glorious ephiphany - that loving you and being destitute were the same thing.

So here I am. A scar that walks and talks and breathes and the great thing about this scar is that I'm evidence of a healed wound. I am no longer raw from loving you and I am no longer lost. I'm a *** who smiles with no teeth.

Your lips tasted like Winters kiss to me- you were chilling and enthralling.
This much I remember.
So as I stand and watch you kiss her- breathe life into her bones, I can't help but wonder if all of man kind got it wrong- believing that only women give life?

Perhaps men give it too- this much has to be true because how else can I feel the sting of your lips against mine standing a room across from you. In the taste of your lips and pressure of your hips I lost myself and is that not life in itself? or have all of our age old ideals confined that feeling of infinity into lust?

I used to stare at the leaves on trees- watching as they blew in the wind kissing each other ceaselessly- and envy that level of intimacy, until your lips gave beauty meaning , i understood it for the first time ever on the couch when my parents finally left us alone.

So now as I stand and watch. Watch as you kiss her lips-as if wishing to find the flavour of mine somewhere in that feigned passion and despite all these years having passed I can't help but feel my heart ache in my chest. I can't help but wish you were breathing life into my now dormant bones.

Your lips were a pssing season, one unlike any other and just a little bit of magic. Just enough to breathe life into me when I used to believe life was breathing and now I believe it means loving.

You broke me...
& I allowed it because I so loved the moment before you uttered how I meant nothing. The moment when you could be redeemed.
The moment in which my breathe would catch in my throat.
The moment in which I desperately wanted to be inlove with you again. The moment in which I wanted to delude myself just one more time into believing you might love me.
Believing that you could value me in my human form.
The form in which my exhale became reminiscent of your name.
You were absorbed into the essence of my very being.
You were everything. & now you are nothing.
This is neither good nor bad.
It simply is.
Because you were poisonous and I loved every second of it ; basking in your presence.
I was a wilting flower and oh how your kiss felt so much like rain.
You were incomparably beautiful to me, but beautiful in the destructive sense.
Beautiful like a forest fire.
But you are not a forest fire.
You were the moon- deeply inconsistent.
You could not be redeemed.
Not by your smile or the way my name tasted leaving your lips or by the rare tears you would spill whispering a belated apology.

You were lost to me.
in all your cruelty- completely lost.

Except for when i would stand lonely in a crowded room- your voice sounding like the insecurities in my mind.
In those moments I'd choked back tears and pretended that the ***** was to blame and not you.
I'd Spend the night hurling insults at the stars whose usually beautiful form seemed a grotesque witness to my aching heart.
And then I'd want to hurt you how you hurt me,
scar your soul repeatedly but then I realised you don't have one.
You never did.

Smile.
even when it doesn't quite reach your eyes or touch the surface of your soul; smile.
Because a little brokenness goes a long way and somewhere in the depths of my broken soul I hope one day a smile saves me.
Even if he doesn't mean it- maybe it will be the stepping stone to us falling in love or the motivation not to put my right foot in front of my left and fall into the depths of those train tracks.
Smile because even if you're not saving yourself maybe you'll save someone else and perhaps that will be enough.
Perhaps in this world where everything is turning a little too fast and I keep getting whiplash as I try differentiate between what was and what is and which deadline I should meet next maybe I'll smile.

I'll smile because the sun is still shinning and the leaves kiss each other with an intimacy I cant help but envy and maybe I'll smile.
And maybe one day my smile might just reach my eyes again and maybe one day I'll be as happy as I pretend to be and one day it will all be enough.

So today I'll smile.