You brought me into this world
To punish me for your mistake.
You could have terminated the misery;
Maybe you would have, in retrospect,
If only you reflected on anything
Other than the pain of your self-possession.
Maybe you’d see that I was born to lose,
Find myself worthy of every bruise.

You stripped me of my autonomy.
I’ll never find a way to make you sorry.
You’re a stranger to apology,
Too infatuated with commiseration
To hear me choke on the guilt,
Gasp through tempered oxygen,
A vessel knotted in tension.

A clenched fish of crushed hope.
A tightrope of flashbacks and fear.

Every slammed door
Echoes the silence you dragged me under.
Because it was your right
To raise me through spite,
To dim every light I find.
To push me towards the familiarity
Of cruelty in the vein of your malicious misery.

I never asked for this:
To be forced to kneel on eggshells
To someone so beneath me.
I’m proud to be antithetical to you,
A fragile ego void of empathy
And your bitterness you taught to never cease.