i've been the other woman
before
i've listened to those words
like daggers to my heart
hollow empty promises of
impossible futures that you
never actually see transpiring but you
whisper in my ears like
sweet nothings because
by the time i realize that you're
full of ****
you'll be long gone and i'll be
the one bleeding
the one left to pick up
the shards of myself i'll never
piece together into a
coherent self
again

but you aren't married
anymore
you don't go home to another woman
your first choice
and hold her in your arms
reach for her when you
wake in the bathing light of the moon
you aren't with a wife
who has your heart and love

yet she still hold your heart
captive
you aren't legally connected to her
but i still pay the toll
stopped on the freeway of my life
because you see her in my eyes
and will i forever be forced to
pay for her transgressions
will you always see me as
the same
as the woman who shattered your world
erased your ability to trust
the ***** who seeks
to be ******
the hurricane that destroys indiscriminately
though how could you ever
think that me
the one who loves
the one who tells you i love you
would ever do that

if anything it's you whose
motives
and intentions
should be questioned

i'm tired of being the other woman
to my boyfriend
who isn't legally married
but is still irrevocably tied to
the pain she tore into him
pain for which i must pay the ultimate price

how could such a horrible
vile woman
ever be loved by him
and what does that make me
the one who can't be
doesn't that make me
even more contemptible
than her
doesn't that mean that i'm
a ***** piece of trash

i wish i'd never met you

i wish i could disappear
or go to sleep and wake up
to a brand new world
without you
because at least if i'm alone
i don't have to constantly feel
rejected by the person i love most

i hate you
but that's a lie
i wish i could hate you

but i'd rather tear myself apart
slice myself to ribbons
***** my insides until
all my vital organs have been expunged

i'd rather die
than live a day
without loving you

maybe you never intended to love me
and i yearn with all of my being
to ask whether i was simply
some science experiment for you
why you led me on
why you stay with me when
it is obvious that
i am not the one
not the one who will melt your heart
the crystalline lattice of ice
that beats within you
behind a barbed wire fence
but i would shred my hands
trying to scale it
i would amputate any limb
if it might prove to you
that i love you
and it's killing me to
not be loved in return

i want you
no
now i've transcended want
i need you
i need you more than oxygen
i'd starve myself and i
wouldn't even feel the pangs of hunger
or my muscles consuming themselves
because the pain of
not being loved by you
when i love you so fiercely
eclipses all else and i
didn't even realize i was
bleeding on the pavement
the butchered wound in my belly
self inflicted
because i want to turn myself
inside out
to rip out my internal organs
and hand them to you on a silver platter

i would give you all of me

i have given you all of me

and yet it's not enough
perhaps it never will be
if you predetermined that you
would never love again
and i'm simply some sort of test
of your capacity to love
which you are slowly realizing
has disappeared

i would rather be tortured
physically ripped apart
i would throw myself upon the rack
the hangman would have no work
i would place the noose around my own neck
snap

but i realize my pain means nothing to you

because you are my judge and executioner
though what pleasure
can you derive from a condemned
dead woman walking
who welcomes physical pain
as glorious distraction
vacation from the
internal pain that no
medicine could touch
that scar tissue that is continuously
pulled apart again
when i see your face and
am reminded of the depth of my love
and your shallow eyes betray your cover
telling me the truth
that you'll never love me
because i am incapable of being loved

is it really so much to want to be loved
when i love so intensely
that it threatens to engulf my entire self
a rip current pulling me out
into a sea of longing that will never
be reciprocated
the pain is the searing of salt water
filling up my lungs
starving me of oxygen
and i welcome the blackness that
covers me in its warm embrace
how can i feel more love in
death’s arms than in the look you give me
your evasive maneuvers
hiding yourself from me when
i’ve laid myself bare

and is there anything more painful
than unrequited love from
the one who i have come to trust
implicitly
yet can’t utter that one word
can’t feel that emotion
can’t love me
the broken and beaten
sullied *****
and i see the fear in your eyes
the distance you put between us
a football field that i can’t traverse
mine-filled
though the sport was once what
brought us together
and you told me that i was different
from any other female you’d
encountered in the wild
the untouched forest of your pain

you made me feel special then
convinced me to stop running
to hang up my battered sneakers
and allow myself to cross
the finish line of my marathon of avoidance
you somehow assured me that
fear
my infernal terror that until then
could not be assuaged by proclamations of
safety

but i trusted you

and i never knew that trust
would lead to love
and the pain of that longing
would threaten
no
promise
to consume me whole
leaving only my bones to
bleach in the burning sun that
was once powered by my
immense love for you
that would never be reciprocated
because though you told me to
abandon my fears
yours still live in your holy of holies
which i am not allowed to regard

i never knew i had the capacity
to love
to let myself be opened up
but you cracked my ribs and
tore out my heart
without even apologizing
for the broken promises
and the erroneously created dreams
that i saw for us
a happiness i was certain i’d never know
and now i know
it’s true

at least i was right
in the end

if there was
even a modicum of chance
that you’d return my declaration of love
i would shower you in reminders
but no shower can wash away
the excruciating ache seated
in the exact center of my chest
that word
love
the only thing i ever want to say
to you
to lay everything out in the open
and to embrace the forbidden

i’d tell you i love you
constantly
if i thought there was even a
minute chance
that you love me too
but i suppose
along with my capacity to love
did not indeed come
a capacity to be loved.

i want to sew myself into you

black wire stitches to close the
gaping hole and
ragged edges of my fragmented self
held together tenuously by
crocodile ocean tears and
a bloodlust that is the only drive
keeping me alive

but you

you are somehow whole
a sweating glass of full fat milk
a body that is not
fragmented
a mind that hasn't been
shattered and the minute shards
ground into an irreconcilable dust
scattered to the wind
and how could you not be
ripped to shreds when
a hurricane fueled tornado
ripped your world apart one day
and cracked the looking glass
through which you saw the world

perhaps you are as self-deceiving as i am
maybe you have an even darker
wool pulled over your eyes
a piston to continually
push down
and errant emotion that
threatens to remind you
of that nameless pain
or shame
an inky black spot i would
rub out of you if i could
if you'd let me

i want you to sew me into your broken places

those crumbling cliff faces
bowing to the persistence of ocean waves
those places where you feel yourself
growing thin
threadbare hidden places that you
lead me away from
because why would you lash out
like a cornered animal when
i inadvertently touch on that
raw nerve which you
tried to ignore but the
wound just festered and now
leaks a pus and
emanates a stench of your
fear
trust issues

how can two broken pieces
from different people
fit together and make one
coherent functioning unit

i want to sew myself into you so you might trust me
like you trust your own self

but maybe you don't even trust him
that uninhibited man who lives
at the core of your being and
transcends all the pain and hurt
and is a perfect mirror image of the
man you were before she
cut out your tongue and
blinded you

i've let you see the
emptiness
the grand canyon that gapes
and yawns open
in the center of my being
with the gravitational pull of
a black hole with the entire universe in its
orbit
but you're like the stopper for
a bath tub and you
fit perfectly into that void

if you'd only let me stitch the edges closed
to a soft pink sensationless seam
a roadmap memory of
where we came from
and couldn't it be a scar that
reminds us of how we came together
reminds us of growth
of a vibrant returning spring even in
the bitter cold winter
we both escaped

and your eyes were the headlights
on the front of a screaming
ambulance that brought me
broken and bleeding to
the emergency room
and your face was the one of
a meticulous doctor
frowning on my damage but
methodically sewing me closed
to keep my entire self from
spilling out

i want to sew myself into your heart
just so that i know
you'll be just as torn
just as wounded
just as broken
when i watch you walk away
into the blinding sunrise
of a new day.

what can i do when there are hands
hands all over my body that
are disembodied reminders of that
night
when kristallnacht fingers slashed my
tender soul to childhood ribbons
penetrated me in my flowering womanhood
and stamped my forehead with
that bloodstained W
and you still see me as that
*****
that infant abandoned
at the red brick fire station
safe haven laws
but i didn't even go to a hospital
when sanguine shame
seeped from my cursed hole
that secret between my legs

and i wished they'd unraveled my entrails
disemboweled me rather than
stabbing me with their flesh
samurai swords of virility and
i wish they'd killed me like
a stuck pig and maybe
placed an apple in my mouth
to silence me instead of
asphyxiating with their hands
that i now can't escape
their sensational escapades
across the plains of this body
that i am forced to
inhabit and traverse the
Serengeti wasteland where i
beg for predators to once more make
me feel like i have no control
and maybe **** me in the end

because those hands

when they first touched me
i would have hacked them off
with a butter knife
some dull rusted blade
but they disengage already
they follow me as if
superglued to the hole which
for them was the complete
embodiment of myself

just a cavernous nothingness for them to inhabit
with their manhood
shooting pain to complete my
empty soul
and fill it with seething shame
and a layer of dirt to
close me up and
forever taint the white sheets
with blood stains absent
and are you still a ****** if
they took you by force and
you never wanted it but
didn't fight back

they are inside me
forever
and they wake me in the
dark of midnight whisperings

they wake me when
you turn over in your slumber
to wrap me in your arms and
you are greeted by shoves
and tears
when will i not whimper
because you aren't them but
those hands
in the darkness
i can't tell the difference between
those hands
and my own
and yours
and i want to be ripped apart
torn open and laid bare
excise them from my secret place
from that place in my brain
from which my nightmares seep
and those hands
hold me down to relive their
searching violation
in bold technicolor revelations
that i'll always be that girl
the drunk *****
the dumb *****
the ***** who deserves to
relive that night to no relief
world without end

you must see a dumb *****

you must see the marks of
their handprints
all over my body

you must be disgusted

but i'll take your *****
and consume it in your absence
just to be closer to you than
those hands.

i would give everything i am to feel
settled in my own corporeal form
tied down to my organs and tethered to my body
intertwined in a reality that
others can access
and isn't their acknowledgment proof enough
that i am of the world
and here
here
her
that burning girl dancing in the
flames of my own house fire
since i doused myself in gasoline
and lit a match

look at me
burn your eyes out of their sockets

look at me
and remind me that i'm here
right here
with you

tell me you're not going anywhere
as i watch you drive away
in the smoke of your absence
so i light a cigarette
maybe the blue smoke curling from
the smoldering cherry
could recreate our life together
but it keeps me standing on that curb
and watching you disappear into the distance
to the horizon
where you fall off the face of the earth
my face
with gorges carved out by
sea salt tears
and i scream for punches
and slaps
i ache for raised bruises
slowly falling into the bluish purple of twilight
and lingering in the verdant green grass and
yellow morning sun
so i can't forget that pain
finally made evident
physical

and i scream into another dimension
so no one sees my anguish
i bottle my message and send it to sea
half hoping some caring soul discovers my secret shame
half hoping it is consumed by the tempestuous oceanic depths
but all i want
is to show it to you

i want to give you
everything i am

i want to share with you
an authenticity i have evaded
truths and reality i have run from
so maybe i know that
you can handle me
that your calloused hands can
grasp my flaming unbridled terror
without sublimating into nothing
and leaving me with
the inevitable culpability that
as always
implicates me in
the destruction of all things
and the death of all hope i had
lashed around the idea of you
and the naive thought that you
love me
and

everything i am

she tells me that we’re coming from the same place
that you are equally blinded by that
white hot
scalding terror
whose fingers wrap sensuously
around my neck and
choke out any semblance of hope
asphyxia hallucinations of
your back as you walk away
and the image is burned into my retinas
as if i foresaw it from
the moment i laid eyes on you
as if the entire story of our relationship
was written into the chocolate profundity of your irises
and i knew you’d disappear into those
bottomless pupils
that i can’t read but can
taste the fear like acrimonious premonitions
of inevitable abandonment

i don’t think you want to hurt me
you don’t intentionally impale me with
the flaming sword of my own inadequacy
more likely i throw myself upon
that funeral pyre
but what else am i to do when
you won’t trust me even though
i’ve laid myself bare
and flayed my skin off the bone
to prove to you that i’m
open
and all you’ve done is ride in on your
white ******* horse
and remind me that
****** never win the prince
and am i forever tainted in your eyes
for a past filled with
all the attempts i made to
rid myself of nameless pain?

i never thought i’d see my 21st birthday

and do you know how it feels
to live knowing when you’ll die
a best used by date stamped across my forehead
reminding me that
nothing really matters in the end
eventually the pain will melt away
and i’ll float into a warm nothingness
the world will go on spinning
but i didn’t want to spend the ephemeral time
here on this earth
in agony so i
stared that pain in the eyes and vowed
to destroy it
and when i realized that was hopeless
i had no choice but to destroy myself
for i would never be able to extricate myself from
that anguish
so i wouldn’t give it a vessel to inhabit
i would starve it away
purge it away
cut it away
burn it away
smoke it away
**** it away
but in the end it never really mattered
because i was going to die anyway

you don’t know that life
my life before i met you
and you’ll never realize that all my actions
were incarnations of my loneliness
and desperation
me groping in the dark for a light switch
or a bullet hole
to take my leave from this
terrestrial prison of perpetual pain

you don’t realize that i never thought i’d meet you
that the world i inhabited had
no room for you
or even the idea of you
because the thought that things would get better
only made everything hurt worse
and it wouldn’t be so easy to die
if the potential for better days to come
lived inside me

though my loneliness was my pain
i couldn’t bear to not be alone
to open the doors to my heart and
let out the musty still air
and light a fire in the hearth
a light to ward off the
obsidian nighttime world i call home

because knowing what it would be like
without the pain
basking in the warmth of the sun’s
glorious acceptance
would only make the night darker
and my loneliness colder than the
absolute zero of my past

you can’t miss something you’ve never known.