I made a god out of the way your hand fit to the small of my back.
My prayers were watching the sunlight dance on your bare skin as you slept.
My hymns were your short, heavy breaths and the way you sighed my name.
I tried in vain to be your church but your chest burned at the sound of every hallelujah.
I was a fool to think you would answer desperate prayers made on knees bent in dirt.

When I was younger, I longed to be beautiful. To have shiny hair, soft skin, collarbones poking through my flesh.
Now that I'm older, I want to burn hearts with intelligence and warm souls with compassion. I want to boil blood with wit and spark imaginations with creativity. I want to soak up the rays of sunny praise for my artwork and poetry rather than my eyes and lips.
I am not programmed with a self destruct button, but calling me beautiful for the wrong reasons is the second best thing.

Rumor has it that the light between your teeth still asks for me by name
But I am trying to let go of the things that have long since left me.

I never thought of you as an addiction
But then again,
I never thought cigarettes would be a problem for me either.