you were just a baseball player with green eyes who went to church on Sunday but the thing is that you don't know from the beginning who is important in your life and who will just be a background character. you stole my heart on a Friday and tore it to pieces on a Saturday only to arrive at church bright and early on Sunday morning with a new ******* your arm. you'd give her a silver cross necklace and a hand to hold and tell her that you had never taken anyone to church before even though my pink flower earring is still under the third pew. you would take her to the abandoned park across the street after the service and spill to her the sob story that is your childhood until you have her almost in tears for you. then after her pity for your sadness is planted in her mind like a poison, you'll tell her it's okay and you're fine and you'll lean in real close, so close that she can smell the cologne that you got for Christmas last year. you'll whisper in her vulnerable ears that there has never been anyone like her and that if she can just save her soul from the evil people of the world, society will be blessed with it one day. you will tell her tales of girls with fangs for teeth who tore out your heart valves and of parents with strong hands and angry words. her eyes will grow wide as you spin the paragraphs with memories of lonely and dark nights where you almost jumped off of that ledge your mind put you on. then you'll lean away from that young girl's ear and you'll look in her eyes and tell her that you didn't jump and you're okay and it's okay. but it's not, is it? that's what she thinks, and you know it. you seem vulnerable, but strong and brave to defend her from all of the toxic waste the world holds. but what this girl, with bright blue eyes and a soul with barely any scratches doesn't understand, is that you are the demons you talk about. maybe once upon a time, in another world, on another street, you were a normal little boy with big dreams and a lunchbox your mother left notes in. but somehow that little boy went away and was replaced by the shadows that lingered under his bed and in the corners of his room painted in blue. the boy with the hot wheels cars turned into a heartbreaker in a baseball cap that didn't care about anybody but the person he saw in the mirror. you'll tell her that her dress looks pretty and you'll go on and on about pointless little things that will make her fall for you. your tongue will wind around syllables that tell her about how you love kids and your favorite food is Oreos and you hit your first home run when you were five. her eyes will see hearts and her innocent little heart will break into pieces for the boy she thinks you are. her clean and new soul will now have cracks and bruises, but it's okay, because she thinks you'll actually stick around long enough to help her heal them. her mind will listen to your heartbreak stories as you sit in the sand of that old park, and she'll mess with that necklace because she realizes that all of these girls who tore you apart are prettier than she thinks she'll ever be. but you already know this. you planned on it. picking out the nicest and most self secure girl with big doe eyes and watching her break down piece by piece, as she continues to think you're a god. it's a game and you always win, no matter what the cards are. this girl will go home and wonder about you and stress herself inside out trying to think of how she can fix the boy with the hole in his heart as you load your gun to put bullets in hers. you'll talk to her all night with sugar on your lips about your favorite constellations and you'll slip in that you ran away once, mentioning it for long enough that she feels your pain, but for such a short second, that she feels shut out. you'll shriek into the receiver in the middle of the night telling her that someone broke into your house to crush your essence but you'll lock all of the doors and windows before she even gets to your gravel road. go ahead and repeat your patterns so that I can sit from the sidelines as it passes by like clouds on a stormy day. show her that you're bleeding inside and your lungs have been punctured and bandage them the next day as if it never happened at all just so she feels the right amount of hopeless. give her the key to everything you've ever been and will be but change the locks the day after. whisper names of loved ones you've lost and tell her of your past as her lips brush yours and make her feel everything you hold like an anchor dragging her down. show her the trees you climbed as a child only to finish by mentioning that you broke your leg in the fall from it's branches. kiss her in September and drop her October because things like that are easy. she'll sit in her room at night six months later wondering why she never passed the test and why someone so sweet would throw her away like that. she'll spin your phrases and quotes in her mind instead of sleeping until she's utterly convinced that it was entirely her fault. she'll write in her notebooks about the perfection that is you and the disaster of her that ruined any chances she had. every time you pass by she will be absolutely tortured with the want to run up to you and scream until all of her organs fail. maybe after a year, she'll finally get you sat in front of her again on a cafeteria stage and you'll spit up every blood soaked lie you can manage. apologies and random nothings will climb up your throat like parasites, leaking into her and latching onto her bone marrow until they drain her dry. she'll laugh with you once again and it'll feel like heaven to her when it's really all a dysfunctional daydream, and as soon as you leave, so will the color from her cheeks. maybe eight months after that she'll start to forget that you ever existed, and she'll finally be able to see dugouts the same way again. but you can sense it. like an animal that can smell fear miles away, you'll come right back and only stay long enough for her to question everything she knows again, then you'll vanish. you can't handle not being in someone's nightmares and dreams, it feeds the fire where your heart was supposed to be. from now on, she always fixes her makeup to try to look like those girls you used to talk about. she always tapes her eyelids shut at night so that maybe she won't see your face. no one with green eyes will look exactly the same, and she hasn't attended a baseball game without thinking of you. her hair will always be brushed, covering her ears so that no one can whisper any lies into her thoughts. but it's all her fault, because after all, you were just a baseball player with green eyes who went to church on Sunday.