There sit the scuffed soles
lying on the bedroom floor
collecting dust on their gleaming tops.
Sometimes,
they move, from room to room,
quietly clicking and clacking
echoing hollowly through the hall
moved by a woman of air.
Sometimes,
he sees her.

There goes another little red flag
In the soft soil of my heart
That I so stupidly watered and fertilized
To make it all that much easier to stab

Years and years,
I held so tightly to my body
in a game of tug of war
with you who gave
and saw me as something to take
even in this bed you never saw
between these walls you never occupied
your whispers still creep between the sheets
so how strange it is
that the first man who asked for my body
and gave the gentlest of tugs got it
with no pull back
and when I lay between his sheets
I can forget your hands and lips
once in the very same spots
and wonder if he's touched them more yet.

The drunk man in the bar
slurs that women are jewels,
capable of giving tender love.

The men we kept as company
could never understand us.

The drunk man in the bar
warns us to only act out of love,
never out of anger.

How about when we’re out of love?
How long will we last?

If women are jewels,
we have already been put
under immense pressure.

Pressure is how we learned
to become precious.

Anymore and we will crumble.


Or maybe we will explode.

He wears his feminism and kindness and quietness well

as a garment to pull on when he's cold and lonely
and one to cast off when he's hot and *****.

He is not the quiet, feminist, nice boy.
Not behind closed doors.

At Primrose Hill, I wonder what happened behind that door to push Plath a few streets over and her head into an open oven.

I wonder how often she smiled with lipstick painted lips
when people complimented her husband's poetic genius.

How often did she want to scream,
He's an abuser, not a poet.

He was a romantic poet with a marker in Westminster Abbey.
He was the flame in the oven and the smoke in her lungs.

How many people have stood here and revered his stone?
I made sure to step on it.

I am tired of being a protector for the alleged nice boys.
Of letting him be shrouded in pity and good intentions when it's convenient.

But I am not in the business of ruining reputations.
I am in the business of watching him ruin mine.

I let him paint me into the ***** who broke his heart.
I let him speak his coward's laments where he thought they'd never find me.

What goes around comes around and they snaked back to me
in a telephone of whispers through lips of those more loving than he will ever be.

I let his smoke fill my lungs, cough once, smile and say
What a nice boy.

I do not say what happened behind closed doors.
I do not scream Look at how he abused her and her and her

I do not set him all ablaze.

Someone once asked me,
"If you could go back and undo having loved him, would you?"
At the time, I said no.
Because even if it hurt to be used and abused,
I really believe the old adage that love is always better.

If I could go back in time, I would not undo loving him.
But I would undo how long I did.

I did not realize that perhaps this makes me damaged goods.
I do not believe that you can only love once in a life,
but I forget that some people do.
I forget that new men may think I have used up my once in a life.

And when he asked me,
"Did you really love him?"
I said yes, once upon a time. But wondered if he wondered
if he couldn't fall for me since I already used up my one time.
And when he asked me,
"Do you still love him?"
I said no, end of story. But wondered if he wondered
if I was telling a lie.

When you get in his bed,
The shame clicks its way towards you.
It wraps itself around you,
Crawls between your legs,
Fills your cold mouth,
Settles in your stomach.
You are doing something wrong.

When you get home,
It leaves you heaving in the bathroom.
Chaos has erupted through your body,
Runs rampant throughout your mind,
And you wonder if he wonders
What he did wrong.
You were doing something wrong.

When you were in high school,
Your mother finds a ******.
She douses you in scripture,
Scalds you in shame,
And sets you all ablaze.
You burn quietly.
You have done nothing wrong.

Now you’re a grown woman
Who can **** her way across the world,
If she wants
But you cannot figure out if she wants.
You do not know how to douse the shame.
You do not know how to have *** with him unafraid
And then ask him to pretend as if you’re human.