and i’m sorry but i cannot get over what happened this time. i cannot get over the blood shed and the tears that echoed off every wall in the room, my cries for you to stay while you kept shoving me out. i cannot get over the ache in my chest when you went back on everything we swore, because darling, real love does not go away like that and i question now if you even know what love is.

you told me your biggest fear was ending up like your dad. that all your hardest work will only lead you to stare into the mirror and watch as it cracked from your knuckles because all you see staring back at you is him.

you said he caused pain,
he caused destruction.
every moment was a ticking time bomb and i can’t help but cower, i can’t help but want to hold a knife to my chest — even when i panic on which side the blade should be pointed. where it should be buried.

my hands shake and match the tempo of your anxiety, you tell me your fears and i drink them up like liquor that makes me want to purge it back out.

because when the time comes
and you have me by the heart,
i cower. you have me feeling as if i’m smaller than you and i can see you like it. a good person does not harm the ones they love, you bruised me way too many times yet broke your own fingers to make sure none pointed at you. you’re always upset, and i’m always sorry.

and maybe thats something you need to hear. because baby, you’re just like him.

my hands clung to any happiness i could achieve so when you came in swinging, i felt the rush of adrenaline in each and every part of my watery veins—they pumped with yearning and that’s all you ever made of me. a ghost wailing for its own vessel but to only be left hollow in a grave throughout the afterlife brim.

i always screamed too loud at night and i know you learned that you’re the reason why i can’t sleep on my left side for too long. but if it makes one of us feel any better, i cannot drink my coffee with four sugars without remembering how you always did things the same amount of times. never more, never less.

and if it helps you sleep better at night, just know, that i can’t.

my insomnia has been coughing up blood more and more as the days go by. the bedroom gets more suffocating and the comforters have gotten more tight. your name is still the same on my phone but you told me to lose that ages ago. (news flash, wide eyed watercolors never looked good on me.)

we both know the truth of what happened that night but you cannot risk your reputation to save my life.

because after all, only one of us have a soul
and everyone knows it isn’t you.

you’re not allowed to miss me.
not when you had me in between the lines of your palms so deep i could not find where you stopped and i began — to the point i merged within your being — you don’t get to miss the spine shudder i gave you now that you are left hollow and seeking solace elsewhere — craving the one thing you failed to give but loved to take

you cried wolf so much — ripped out far too many hearts to feast on that you forgot to guard your own, the security system only being a thin layer of your pride

you are not allowed to miss me
because once i finish drinking your blood, there will be nothing left of you to dissolve in my shadow.

your lover is a forest fire and she keeps
you warm all throughout the winter.

she lights, you burn.
she fades, you yearn.
does it ever get tiring
to love something so volatile?

my lover is the gentle breeze of spring
the serendipity of summer
and i’m not ashamed to say i love her.

she nourishes,
i grow.

we
bloom
together.

there’s something wrong with me. there has to be — because how else would i have been able to look into your eyes, touch your soul, and taste the warmth it lacked? how could i stomach you so easily yet still want to purge you up like bad liquor? you never were quite right, but that’s okay. because somehow, that’s just what i liked.

i clenched my fist and this goodbye for so long, i choked it down with my tears and held you to sleep while you hiccuped apologies that you’ll be better. but my darling evermore, i cannot be the person you hurt just because you’re hurting. i cannot be that person anymore.

you knock on my door in a way a ghost haunts their crime scene. there’s nothing in your hands but sorrow, yet i race to you anyways. i take your cold trembling limbs and attempt to make them warmer (even when i know the ice is from within.)

you tell me you try to find me in every soul you meet, every daylight your shadow tries to drown in. but darling, i know this time will end up like the last.

you come, and then you go.
i give, and then you take.
i think you will change and you give me the false security that’s enough for me to fall back into the arms i desperately tried to rip off me. i run back to what i was running from.

but baby, please mark my words when i say you will never touch me again and you will continue to fill that void i left because thats only fair after what you gifted me.

i clenched my fist and this goodbye for so long, i choked it down with my tears and held you to sleep while you hiccuped apologies that you’ll be better. but my darling evermore, i cannot be the person you hurt just because you’re hurting. i cannot be that person anymore.

right now you are dissecting a love that may never pass your twisted version of an examination, and that’s okay.

because the next time you come back to my door, i will not be there to open it. next time you come back, i’ll be gone.

sometimes i wonder if my trauma is still after me. i sit in my bed and try not to count each chipped paint mark on my wall by two’s and how many knots in my stomach that tightened in the last hour, i wonder if my trauma is still alive even after all of those years ago

i fall like the autumn leaves, the same ones that crunched under my shoes when i was thirteen, what do you do when the music finally stops?

you could start it over and replay the same record or you could put in a new one, they say old habits die hard but mine keep showing up at my doorstep like old family coming home for the holidays, except they overstay more of their welcome and never like to be put to bed.

maybe the punch line is that i don’t really know when to stop either, that i don’t like the feeling of my heart not being in my own mouth. every time i get an option to put in a new record, i put the old one back in, even if it’s damaged and has too many faults.

i wonder if my trauma likes to be held, because when i was fourteen, i refused to be touched at all.

and i can’t help but wonder if my trauma ages along with me, because sometimes i still see the same little kid with guns for hands staring right back at me wondering who the hell i am.

i like to think that soon i’ll grow tired of that record and put in a new one, let it play out and have myself enjoy new music for the first time again, and then when it dies, i can give it a proper burial and move on to a bigger label

and maybe i’m capable of doing so right now,

but my trauma likes to sit at the edge of my bed & play that same **** record as a theme song of my wake.

you don’t know me anymore
and truthfully you never really did.

you knew the parts i painted with my wrists but never the ones i created with my wretched heart that you repeatedly squeezed too tight and had me clean up the mess.

and if i’m being honest, i never really knew you either.

we both had a fantasized version of each other and what we desired each other to be, only to have reality sink in years later.

i was always five steps ahead while you were taking the fast lane to get further, never fully meeting our destination and mark.

the last time we talked, you apologized for the way you were and that you’ve changed

but if i learned anything from you,
it’s to never trust a wolf with no teeth

because they never know when to stop.