I used to think that I loved you
because you made me feel greater than my frame, made me feel
better, desirable, desiring
of the world and succulent
amongst the leaves and limbs of my arms,
hands and feet.

"But I still hitch for you now
even though my skin has honeycombed
and the nectar has dimmed and eaten away at my eyes and lips."

I tried to tint my hair red to light this night
But it is dull and stringing out amidst my plant-stained fingers
I tried to dissolve away the lines upon my skin to glow with luminosity
But they are wedged deep and have left gouges of pin-****** behind
I tried to exhume the dead and the dry from my face to better breathe
But instead it filmed over stinging and suffocates

I tried to forget you in order to be free of this
But I am not cleaned of you so easily.

I’m so ******* terrified of love
I am so ******* terrified of putting myself out there.
And I feel like I loved you because you were ******* gorgeous and amazing and most of all
you were kind

I felt that love would not be a battlefield of angry limbs
and spited curves
with you

And I don’t know what to do because I feel like
I spent so much of my time working my way up to being capable of you even just you

that I might eventually be able to brave a rougher existence

That when you didn’t happen for me I essentially cut the bridge open beneath my feet
once everyone had hastened across.

And now I’m stuck.

And you realize that yes, your natural urges
your bites and whines of jealousy and possession
do run deep and it is a hard
venom to cut out.

But it can be done.

Slowly.

Without the angry fetters of tangled heart-strings
You will breathe constant like the rising and falling tide does for the shifting moon


Should they wish it.

Recognizing the seed of pity in someone else’s eyes
Is the worst breed of evil.

Because it means your demons were right.