I was with a man who would bake glass shards into strawberry shortcake

I would thank him while biting into the frosting and the fragments

It became our routine

Sugar and sutures went hand in hand

Sometimes I think I craved the pain. Perhaps I earned the shredded esophagus and internal bleeding.I never had to part my lips.

He was the one who walked away after all I swallowed. I begged him to come back. Wrote poems about my hurt. He was my home.

But even I found others.

Other ways to get the glass fix.

It was never my intention to keep swallowing shards

But with a spoonful of sugar...

I still cry from all the ugly damage that's been done, by myself and by the others. With my soft tissue shredded, I see so much ugly. Sometimes I can feel my vessels thumping underneath the spidery scar tissue. Phantom pains stab and hot panic puddles in my chest like a pool of blood.

It's moments like this that I wonder if I'll ever heal.