I drowned the thought of you in my 11pm Sangria ritual to chase away the demons that plague my mind, that tell me I am not good enough for you. The bed we once shared now suffers from a cold spot from where you use to lay with me. We use to generate so much heat when our bodies touched that I thought we would become hotter than the sun. You use to tell me how beautiful I was; that I held my Moscato white wine with such great precaution not to spill it that you thought I was an angel carrying a soul to the hands of God. You knew my heart was delicate. After all, the very sight of me sent venom pulsing through your veins, sort of like you wanted to destroy my already-feeble bones. Your anger teased out shyness in me, and when you decided to lift your hand that one faithful night to smack me it sent me crawling on my hands and knees for forgiveness, just to see that we wouldn’t end up on the road my parents once were. You made tears swell up in my eyes when you were inside me, and soon I learned not to cry when you decided to plow my body, a land for the taking. Parts of me started dying, and soon I was nothing but an empty shell with dampened eyes. You took, and took, until you got furious at me that there was nothing left to take. Sometimes I still sit in the corners of my bedroom silent because you loved me most when you saw me there, your tiny little ghost just waiting for you to make her disappear. And on some nights when I was with you, disappearing didn’t seem all too bad- you use to scare me enough that I wished you had removed the love marks you left on my alabaster skin. What we had was toxic, and I was on life support just to get by the fact that I was nothing more than your special object. Day after wretched day you tortured me with ‘I love you’s’ and smacks across the face that caused blood to erode from my cheeks. My voice started to shake and yelps came through my mouth when you decided that my contorted body was a pleasure worth seeing, that my pain was the very essence of why you ever loved me to begin with. I can’t remember the first day you started to push me under, but I know that when you did you would never let me come up out of that black water for more than 3 seconds, just so I could get another gasp of air to last me a couple of more months. I will never regret the time you told me I was worth more than you, because maybe that was your healthy conscience talking. Maybe you could have loved me better. Maybe I could have listened more.

All I can say is that I will never forget the time you choked me hard enough that I couldn’t breathe; that you smacked my head so hard against our bedroom wall that the snap sent my brains splattering across what was now your floor.  

-ritual

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