You’re beautiful in the way you hurt me
In the way that I’ll slander your name
But willingly fall into your arms in the cover of darkness
I can’t remember when you first fell for me
Only the look in your eye that said you wanted me
I fell for you at first
You, with your pretty words and promises
And by the time you showed me your true colors
A piece of me had fallen in love with that, too
I kept telling myself that someday I’d walk away
And break free of your grasp
But that grasp has arms that hold me
Arms that, when I’m lonely in a sea of people
Are at once my lifeboat and the chain around my leg
Your kisses were beautiful, pure life flooding through me
Red hot and sweet and painful
But they left marks when your lips left my skin
Rivers of red that remind me of your affections
How is it that you were my death and my revival?
    ~O

I used to think
that we were born empty
and someone else had to make us whole.

I used to believe
that he would complete me
not leave me empty and cold.

The boy stripped me
bare and took everything
from me just to fill himself.

I became nothing
but a shell of the girl that
I used to be, before he emptied me.

I used to think that
he loved me and he was doing
this to me out of care and devotion.

I was wrong to think,
to believe that he caged
me out of love and admiration.

Each hit
and verbal abuse
felt like love to me.

He told me that
he was scared of losing me,
so he lost his mind when I didn't answer.

He loved me
too much to let me
do a n y t h i n g by myself.

If I didn't have him
I would end up alone,
who else could possibly want me?

I believed
each and every
lie that he told me.

-is it really abuse if he says he loves you?

you were ever rarely a good love
a bad love
an abusive love
a love that was never love
my first love

The cigarettes that left your mouth
Put burn marks on my arms
The words that left your mouth
Made no marks
But burned just the same

I recoil at the smell
Of anything burning,
Cigars at dinner or fireplaces
Send me into a dark corner of my mind
I lose myself, forgetting why I came.

I remember sitting on your back porch
Back when we first started hanging
I knew at that point that I liked you
But I wasn't ready for the feelings
That consumed me when the sun
Met your eyes and mine
I knew you had brown eyes
But when the light hit them just right
I fell so far
Into the golden flints reflecting back at me
I lost a piece of myself that day
And you never gave it back to me

I can barely stand certain music now
Each song holds a memory locked into it
Multi-Love for instance
It's fitting that I'm burning incense right now
Because this song brings me back to December
You were into hookah at that point
The sweet and smoky scents danced around us
As your sonos speakers
Cascaded those guitar riffs into our ears
I thought you were ecstasy
But you became an addiction
And like that smoke in my lungs
You burned me instead

sometimes i feel like a dog
loyal to its owner for all the wrong reasons
always returning with a wagging tail
after being hit
starved
beat
and abandoned.

— separation anxiety

Loving you was meant to be beautiful
Loving you was meant to wrap me in a warmth
That comforted and reassured the
bottomless pit I call me


Loving you meant I had purpose
Loving you created a blanket that hid
All of the pain that comes with
Not loving myself


Loving you felt dead
Loving you would force me to pretend
That this parasite of you
Was good for me

How beautiful it is

to have been released from those chains

that you’ve constricted my heart with

For all of those years

                               Alysia Marie 2018 ©