You once asked me why I even liked you.
I started rattling off the usual answers:
You’re funny, you’re sweet, etc.
What I should’ve said is:
You feel like home.
The only problem is:
The home I know is full of fighting.
Full of lying. Full of pushing and pulling.
Home is not safe. Neither were you.

Cold hotel rooms during childhood family vacations
Looking for the peace and direction that never was
Feigning the pleasant vision of relationships
Longing to return to where everything was familiar
Despising the idea of society-influenced normality
Refusing any form of participation in your delusions
Falling asleep to do it all over again tomorrow.
I lie awake in my bed alone and older
But nothing else has changed.

I’m a righter – not a fighter.

Things will end how they may
But I securely believe
That some day
You lot will leave;
Every mismatched rhyme
And unknown connection
Will have its time
Shrugging off all signs of affection
Therefore dismissing any reason
That might reside in that mind
And I will ease on
To erase all memory of your kind.

I won’t choose this as my battle
Because I know where it ends –
It’ll inevitably shatter
And these shards don’t tend
To smooth themselves out,
Nor will you take it
Upon yourself to try a differing route –
A new escape – but the same ****.

So I’m left wondering why
It’s always my job to make it right.

You’ll never know what’s going on inside my brain
I’m not that girl anymore
Who writes poems from the inside to match new scars on the outside
And you’re lucky
You’ll never wake up to a new post about my ****-ups
Or get a call begging you to stop them from happening
I’m not that girl anymore
I wasted that on the wrong person
I gave up
And you’re lucky

You don’t hate me
But of course you don’t
I didn’t blame you for your intrusive thoughts
I didn’t rip your innocence out of your hands
I didn’t claim your issues were personal attacks on me
I didn’t invalidate your experience
You have no reason to hate me

I am the one left with hate when all I wanted was to love
The pain, distress, confusion all rolled into one
No other way to express my emotions
I’ve become a shell of who I used to be
I’ve become a fraction of a human being
It’s the hate that fuels me
To be better than us, better than you

I offered you everything and you tore it apart like you’d never been loved before
You left me with nothing to give so I could never be loved again

It’s true you never left me alone —
you left me with EVERYTHING