and then I asked you,
"What's your biggest fear?"

you gave me a quivering sigh,
looked at me straight in the eyes
and said,

"It's that eventually, you will see me
the way I see myself."

Everything is heavy
A blanket that feels like a sheet of granite
And eyelids embracing gravity like they were old friends

Or maybe I’m just weak
Frozen statuesque like
One I saw in a museum, all chicken wire and saran wrap
Nothing of real substance
The outline of a teenage girl

My head is a cotton ball full of angry hornets
Fuzzy and unfocused but full of unrelenting pain
That comes back again and again
Issues don’t disappear just because they’ve already
Made themselves known

Maybe real girls have to get up
Get dressed, brush their teeth
Go to school and raise their hands
Or their skirts

But I’m not a real girl
I’m Pinocchio in reverse
And my strings have been cut
So I’ll stay in my box,
If you don’t mind

you always had a way with words,
always knew when to quiver your voice or heighten your pitch to get me to fold in half
crooked seams
what horrid things you'd never say but didn't have to
cause that,
that was all in your face
your eyes
the way you'd never say my name
only ever in dark fields
or dim rooms,
always the next town over
and I always heard that secrets can't be kept
but you kept me in your pocket,
folded up to occupy the least amount of space
you so generously gave to me.

Bullet-hole chest
Me, a girl with parts missing
You, a smile with a smoking gun
caught in a war zone of I still love you
Refugee to the emotions that still hold me sway
Gentle as you killed me,
Kind at the slaughter
I died with tears drying on my face
And lips still shaped to kiss you
I never even saw the knife

Fate climbs trees while everyone sleeps at night but you;
She slips through the branches towards the star dusted sky;
Not a hair out of place or a scratch on her skin,
a nocturnal creature made to the likeness of the moon—
There'll always be a yesterday, but you remind me of tomorrow.

You love me like twitchy fingers love pulling the trigger,
Not at all, and then all at once;
You replaced arrows with bullets,
And instead of filling with love, my heart poured out blood

You love me like tear gas loves open eyes,
To wish me blind to the things you've done;
You didn't think, you never do think
Can your conscious be clear if you don't have one?

You loved me like metal loves a microwave,
To make it spark and set fire;
Carelessness is antonymous with admiration,
And you always did admire destruction