I will never be the loved one.

I will never know the mirroring
of the love, affection, attention
adoration
that I so willingly give unto others.

I will never know what it is like
to be treated like a queen
to be sung to every day
to be pampered and cared for
to be lusted after
to be wanted.

I will never know devotion.

I will never know what it is like
to trust blindly
the knowledge that to you,
I am enough.
I am beautiful.
I am perfect.
I am loved.

I will never be the loved one.

Once upon a time
there was a girl
and how happy and swollen
her heart was in love.

a drunken disaster
of honeymoon blindness.

the satisfaction
of dreams come true
eyes always shut
waiting for the next kiss.

somewhere in time
she came into bloom.

the color drained
from her precious petals,
reality sunk into her.

heavy iron anchors.

the only strength remaining
learning how to cope
writing needlessly.

hungry, forlorn
the words make little sense
even ninety days later.

I'm afraid that I am starting to look my age because I am no longer carded when I walk up to the bar. I think the permanent wrinkle in my brow may be telling - the creases in my forehead are also unkind to my youth.

Whatever youth is left in this body, a breadbasket of stress.

Of course, drinking does nothing to help preserve whatever visage it is that I am so greedily clinging to.

And oh god, what an awful thing it is to be twenty three. How desperately far away it is from nineteen, bright and burning.

I listen to the voices of other men.

They tell me that I am a goddess,
worthy of all the love and lust in the world.

I listen to the music of their voices on repeat
artificial, prerecorded sweetness and affection.
Adoration and attention.
Sometimes dusted with lust.

Words that no longer come
from my own lover's lips.

i am his moon,
though he will never say.

i lit his way through the dark.
he was never without the promise of home.

he is my sun.

five hundred and sixty days
without sunscreen.
my flesh is burnt beyond recognition.