i.

It’s the late 1990′s and you’re a kid

You’re skipping down the path in the garden called memory lane

Holding your mother’s hand

Suddenly you trip and fall

You see the lacerations across your knee that sting for days when you try to shower

For the path in the garden of memory lane has tripped you over by your nimble child legs

Wounding you temporarily

ii.

It’s the present day and you’re a grown woman

You’re walking down the rocky road  called adulthood, wringing your own hands together in frustration

Your husband was found dead in a crashed car with another woman

Drunk driving and infidelity do not mix

You don’t see lacerations anywhere

Nor feel the ache of wounds that sting for days when you try to shower

For the rocky road whose name is adulthood has tripped you over by your last legs

Wounding your heart instead

For life

It's been a long time since I've been to church

My horns are starting to grow back again

I'm back, *******

Well, well...

Missed me?

Relax. There's plenty of me to go around

Enough to keep you coming back for seconds

That's all I ever do.

The thing about a Jezebel is that she's been through stuff

So she's more streetwise and seasoned

With fault and reasoning

To make you keep coming back for more

Ruths are plain and bland

Uncooked meat

Raw and salmonella-inducing

Makes you puke on the spot and swear off meat forever

Turning vegan

Swearing off the word

Turning heathen

Sometimes when I miss you, I pick up the blue bottle of cologne you gave me (just because I said I liked it), spray it on my neck, and go to sleep with the memory of you enveloping me with your lips on my neck and your form pressed against mine from behind - my big spoon

And imagine you whispering "intimacy" into my ear as you fell asleep in that pose - like you always did - while I, like a cat would keep awake and just stare at that spot on the ceiling, willing myself not to fall asleep lest I should awake and find you gone.

I've been doing this since the last time your arms were around mine in a hug that neither of us wanted to break free from

Before I got on that train home for the last time

And you got on that plane home for the last time

Never to come back to me again

Despite all the shooting stars I wished on

Dead stars

Just like our future

I scrolled down my call history the other day till I came upon a familiar number

A dead number

Whom during this time, last year could almost pass as my lockscreen - because of the number of times I'd get a call from that number in a day

The number that went from being saved just as "Zfrom Tinder"

to "Z"

to "Z*k *with a vibrating heart emoji beside it" (because whenever my phone vibrated with that number on it, so would my heart)

And finally just to a random series of numbers with no name because congrats, you just got deleted out of my contacts and out of my life

Out of sight, out of mind...

The day you called me again, I thought I saw 666 on the screen because the Devil might as well given me a call from hell as the operator with you on the other end waiting to talk to me again

And drag me back down there with you

Not this time, you aren't

For as far as I know, dead men tell no tales

And I can't hear dead people

I still have that picture of you & I during a hike up some hill whose name I can't remember now taken by another one of our friends who came along with us for the trip. There were 5 of us. This was 3 years ago. That part I remember.

You're sitting beside me on a fallen tree and grinning ear-to-ear while I'm sitting on it coffee-shop-style with one leg up, pouting - because i was tired from the hike. I remember that bit too.

I'll never forget that trip.

I'll never forget our friendship.

I remember showing that picture to my ex when I was still dating him - this time, last year - and him telling me how good I looked in it. At that time, we had become nothing more than strangers with memories.

You were busy with who had now become your current fiancée

I was busy with who had now become my current ex.

In retrospect, I knew it wasn't me who looked good.

It was what you did for me that made me look good.

That ex later on left - inevitably - but the feeling of heartbreak when he left wasn't as bad as the feeling of heartbreak when you told me to **** out of your life because you didn't need me in it anymore. That I did for good.

He broke my heart.

You broke my spirit.

I also remember the way your name went further and further down in my inbox, decreasing with importance later on.

You probably don't even remember that our names used to be the highlight of each others' inboxes at one point in time

People wondered if we were together

Once again, it was what you did for me and what I did for you

I also have the polaroid of that photograph, in case you wondering

It hangs by a peg from the fairy lights by my bed - next to the other polaroids featuring me and my other friends

I took a look at that photograph yesterday evening

And I wrote this.

But you will probably never get to see it

The same way you never got to see...

...how much I loved you.

They say that behind every successful man is a woman

And that behind every **** is a *******

A huntsman

Who lured the poor princess into worlds unknown with false promises

Promises of being crowned queen of his heart

Promises of being able to live in the kingdom in the castle in the air

Conjoured up by his seductive tongue

Dripping with manipulation

Laced with lies

The million-dollar tongue that once gave her so much pleasure

And later so much pain

The tongue that made her own so cheap

Sticking it down some random guy's at 2 am in a bar

And later on around said guy's manhood

In mechanical passion

The same routine every night

Different people, different places

Like a puppet on strings

A puppet on heartstrings

Whose puppetmaster is grief