I felt so big, my heart felt so hard
I did not understand
why
I was melting.

My skin said
different words than my mouth

there were
welts I called petals and
droplets of my blood
that stained like nectar on his sheets –
I used them as ghosts,
traced silhouettes
to haunt him with, but the loss

haunted me more. It
was
a dehydration.

He had me believing I was
becoming more
and more full, there was so much
affection I just had to
spill a little –

instead, I was being emptied.
Eaten, swallowed

fattened
for the slaughter.