in my writing anyone can tell i'm a fraud
just a painter trying their hand at a new form
composition swapped for sentence structure,
verses on pages where watercolors on canvases once laid

in your writing i can tell you're a fraud
you put words into your mouth, hope people believe them yours when they spill out
a performative emotional ventriloquist waiting for applause

i used to think writers romanticize and painters show,
after all you were my frame of reference when it came to poetry
but I’ve since learned you’re just not truly a writer

I put down the pencil and picked up the ink
and hey i'm not half bad but you’re not half good
i tried to speak your language not realizing you didn’t know it either
kept handing you words you could rewrite into warnings

come to think of it you never tried to speak mine,
never tried to translate me, never grabbed charcoal
and maybe it's for the better,
you would have smudged it around to cover up who i am
you mime meaning and call it understanding,
i was wrong in mistaking your performance for presence
maybe you being a **** writer wasn't all bad,  if it kept me from the monster you actually believed i am
maybe you being a **** writer is why i too fell in love with the version of me you crafted, she’s a little less ruined

the more i look back the more things i notice, more things to write about
like how your poems were never directed at me,
i was not the audience you were pandering too because you knew you already had me hooked,
no, instead you wrote to another public,
I was a character in your songs you could show off, let people pick and ****
made me into a myth, a tale parents tell their kids to scare them into sleep
you were my muse and the person i was trying to reach with my strokes
not realizing there was no heart to reach for

so i write now and you still don't paint,
if you did i think you’d be bad at it anyway
you’d hate cubism, seeing more than one perspective seems to fracture your mind
and you’d find a way to romanticize it all, put reality aside
you never were good at taking things at face value,
even worse at translating and encompassing things bigger than you
I was the stars but knowing you, you’d just paint a blank black sky, add your own galaxies to and call it a piece worth while

either way i still write, usually about you, always directed at you
i find new words and try to rewrite the story you told,
but if i ever show the public I’ll be sure to make it an illustrated book with all the imagery i know you can't paint

see you're obsessed with poetry and the grotesque, that kind of stuff
think yourself deep for finding beauty in blood, call trauma a sonnet if it bleeds enough
so it's no shock you adored the idea of cannibalism as a metaphor for love
something so pure, so soft turned violent and greedy in your hands
you claimed it beautiful, two becoming one,
sacrifice and devotion a seasoning of life, just table salt
and you took the name of black widow with pride, thought it made you a romantic
i suppose you forgot how the metaphor works, like those secrets we shared in your attic

the idea of love within cannibalism comes from the sacrifice, it speaks of the act of giving
the selflessness of the eaten and not the hunger of the eater
when being devoured is a gift, not a theft
yet you insisted the desperation to taste me was care

you consuming me was not love but me allowing it was
I let you devour me down to the marrow in my bones
let you lick the veins clean and the blood into your cup dripped
i thought it was an exchange, could have sworn in iron ink i spelled your name
thought i tasted your soul when we kissed, oh how naive of me

you let the metaphor consume you much like i did you, much like you wished someone would too
you became obsessed with the obsession of it all, craved to be craved
but devouring someone’s heart doesn’t earn you a place in it
it was love when i laid down on the plate
but please
don't call it love how you licked your fingers clean

the ghost of my devotion stood on trial for you,
role of lawyer in place of victim taken in stride, in strife
i stood by your side fighting for your name while you tore mine down in exchange

i pleaded to the court not realizing the judge and jury had my face
self defense, i claimed
pointed to the scratch on your chest i had left
the one from trying to reach for your heart,
the one for which a bandaid would have been enough

i remember marking you first, remember feeling criminal for it
brazed for life sentence, but still kept gauze ready to treat it like a bleeding artery
there was so much blood in my hands i mistook for yours
drips down my wrists dry and forgotten, blood i recognize now as my own
i hurt you and you killed me, made it look like my own doing

all is fair in love and war. was my excuse
i think they’re one, the way they wound, inevitably

my argument fell apart when the accusant lawyer came forth with the autopsy and sad eyes strikingly like my own
blunt force trauma, mismatched gashes and cuts
post mortem wounds, bruising all over
what you did to the body, after the fact, that was irredeemable
your cruelty kicked and punched, a trail of evidence of hatred undeniably left behind

He picked up the fruit, mistook the shine for something familiar
Thought the crimson red meant safety
a comfort food he remembered from childhood

Hungry and eager, tongue sliding over lips
he popped it into his mouth
biting down hard
expecting raspberries’ familiar flood

But the sound of something breaking met him instead
A tooth chipped on the cherry pit
It was a cherry after all

Starvation had blurred his sight
He thought I was soft, sweetness of an old friend
But I was never raspberries
He just never looked long enough to know

The illusion shattered in his mouth
iron taste instead of tartness
He spat it out, blood and juices mingling
bone and pit, both broken, indistinguishable now

He walked away, changed but not beyond repair
red-stained hands already reaching for another low-hanging fruit
too desperate to clean before, too desperate to care,
too starved to seek fruit he might like more
The cherry lay behind, torn and spent
pit smashed, flesh split wide

In time, the earth will cover it
The water will nurture what remains
Years will pass, roots will sprout
The cherry blossom will rise strong again
And in the branches
more cherries will grow
sweeter than they ever were before

you told me once I was bright
insisted on it as I tried to tell you I wasn't, tried to show you
You said you'd hear none of it
I mistook your wish to not listen as a promise you saw, saw me
I know now, you never did
you were holding a candle, mistaking its glow for my own as its heat warped my reflection
the orange haze altered the way my skin looked, made the shadows retreat out of sight

I had to think back hard
trying to remember when you began to alter reality’s way for your comfort
I think it was from the start
You brought the candle with you from day one
I see you carry it everywhere, erasing your own darkness with it even now
It makes sense, I saw the glow on your skin
i believed your praise so wholeheartedly
i assumed it was my own shine bouncing onto you
just as you said, insisted
with time of course, your eyes adjusted to the light so much so you could see me
the shadows zoning back in, everything too clear for your liking

and so naturally you moved the candle closer and closer and closer
Hoping its heat would keep changing and morphing that which you hate
would soften me, melt away the harsh edges I had spent years sharpening,
strip me down into something smooth, something pliable, someone you could claim to love
and each time it had less and less effect

It didn't hurt for a while if i’m honest,
sure, sometimes the heat made me sweat,
but I just assumed it was that warmth people talk about when they talk about love
there was not one butterfly in my stomach, just smoke in my lungs from where you were burning me,
lit me on fire in hopes whatever charred remains fit your fantasy
You expected me to be a Phoenix, raising pure from the ashes for your entertainment
as if that didn't mean I had to die first

And you know, it all makes it so much more hurtful to remember
when you walked away from the fire you started
sunglasses on claiming it was too bright for you
you took your stupid candle with you
always wanting to search for what you’re missing in someone else's flames

Here's what you don't know
In trying to light me up, you only managed to cast an even darker and bigger shadow,
behind my back where nobody sees, but I feel it's cold constantly
It almost makes me wish for the burn of the candle
tell me, is that not the cruelest part?

You’ll regret crying in my hands—
  but only because
  you’ll miss the way they held you.
Your tears slip between my fingers
like quiet reminders
  of how far you’ve run
  from the person you used to be.
And still—
I know you remember your feet
each time they find their way
  back to my door.
    Instinct.
      Muscle memory.
        Need.

You come back bare,
and I wear you like a crown—
delicate, dangerous,
  balanced at the top of my thoughts.
You are the ache I prioritize.
  The storm I drink from.
    The wound I keep pressing,
      just to feel something again.

While my friends fold hands
in prayer to Jehovah,
I’m just praying
my depression doesn’t **** me over.
Sometimes I’d rather believe in your skin
  than in heaven—
and sometimes,
  I think your mouth is the closest
  thing I’ll ever get to salvation.
So we drink.
  We touch.
Not because it heals anything—
  but because it delays
       the end.

Darling,
we drink so this love doesn’t burn out.
We drink
  instead of breaking up.
And when your mascara smudges
  under my kiss,
when your sighs leave trails
  from your stained makeup,
I taste the salt of your sadness—
hidden beneath powdered cheeks
  and perfectly drawn lips.
We kiss
  beneath mood lighting
    and half-lies.
We are mature enough to drink,
  and broken enough to
    make up
      in every way
      the word
        dares to mean.

i probably think about him more
than he thinks in general.
i have an obsession with you

I fell in love with a boy at 16,
and here is a list of things he taught me:

1.) People who love you will remember the little things.
2.) The people who look the happiest are probably not even a little happy.
3.) No matter how much you love someone, you can’t make them choose you.
4.) People will repeat the same traumas done to them without even realizing it.
5.) If you just lie there and silently cry, it’s over faster.

P.S. I really hope you’re in therapy,
especially now that I see you have a little girl you call your own.