Do you want to know why I stayed?
I threatened so many times to disappear before you glimpsed
the worst parts of me, through whispers and fists and biting
my lips to stop the eruptions of volatile girl from stabbing
you with my skeletons.
In the misty, early hours when neither of us were sleeping
because you were scared I'd go and I was scared I wouldn't,
I showed you the nooks and crannies of my character, the
crevices and caverns of my interchanging moods.
I did my very best to upset and cause unrest and I flung
every miserable curse in the direction I thought you'd be going.
I screamed my violence and mistakes against the front door
and told you I had proven you right.
I was unlovable.
I was a dysfunctional bundle of bones and you were
better off without me.
And I turned over to sob myself to sleep and considered
how I would also be better off without myself and as I
went to hit my pillows-
As I heaved in a shuddering breath of regret and guilt
and my lungs expanded to places I had never felt before,
You reached out and caught me and inserted yourself as
a root in my flailing, upended life.
You stroked my hair and cradled my shivering body and
quieted my sobs and told me there was no way in hell
that you'd leave this beautiful mess.
You said that I punish myself for being anything other than
what I think I should be. You said that I wreck the things
I love the most so that they won't one day see me as
a monster, and you're right. I prove how horrible I am
before you can. I sabotage so that I can say
I know. I'll let you go.
But you absolutely refuse to go,
So here I stay.