There was a time in my life when I thought you could fix me.
The two of us were lost and scratching for meaning in a post-post-postmodern world,
looking for purpose and clarity,
looking for the black-and-white morality in our grayscale lives.
When fate left us reeling in a shared embrace,
I let my sorry *** believe you were the Big Bad to my Virginia Woolf.
Leave it to me not to learn from past mistakes.

There was a time I saw you as a hero, a martyr of some twisted kind,
willing to give back to me that missing piece that someone else had cut from my flesh long ago.
I saw your love as the highest I could ever earn,
and I was devoted to your work-- whatever that meant.

I never saw the casualties.
I don’t even know that there were casualties, but I look into your face and I can see--
blood has been shed,
and it was on your behalf.

You don’t have the kind of face that launches fully armed battalions.
Leeland says you look like a mall Santa,
but I think you make quite the lady-killer.
And I mean killer.
You may as well call me Lizzie Short.

And when your life or ours started to wane,
when I saw your empty promises for the broken vessels that they were,
I realized I didn’t know where I ended and you began.
I realized there were so many words in your textbook full of saccharine lies
and you were using all of them to keep me weak enough to stay.

Was I falling for it? Hell ******* yes, I was falling for it.
I wanted so desperately to have someone in my life
whose every word I could believe
without fear of betrayal or accidental abuse
that I chose intentional manipulation.
Better to know it’s coming, that was my logic.
Better to cause it myself.
Better if I’m the one who dips the cigarette in your poisoned blood and lights it.

You won’t end my life.
You look like it, you act like it, but you don’t outright **** anyone.
You just give people the means and method to end it themselves.
I’ve heard it said there are three types of people:
the type that lose to you,
the type that win and suffer the trauma for the rest of their lives,
the type that win and then become you.
I’m the third, and though you hate to hear it, I wish I’d been the first.

Some people are so grateful to be alive.
But not me.
Not anymore.
Not ever.