Miss, Atomic Bomb,
how are you today?

Do you feel a jittering in your veins,
hear a chattering of ivory teeth
in your sugar skull
candied by your wish to always be oh-so-sweeter?

When you fell to the ground under his hands,
rough with militant knuckles
tattooed in unlined blues and purples
transforming into nausea-inducing camouflage hues,
and your new, Target brand, $2.99 black tights
ripped viciously at the knees,
did you feel an explosion in your chest?

Did you feel angry,
willing to lash out with toxic words
that your floodgates had always tried to hold back,
the dams now creaking and groaning in beautiful sighs?

Did you,
when it hurt,
fight against that war hero who had held you close
during a time you could barely remember,
blurred crimsons shading the edges of every smiling photograph?

Or did you fold him into your campfire-scented embrace
and apologize profusely
for being so naturally destructive?
I bet you open your lips-
swollen and bleeding through cracks
that could define
‘damaged’
in the dictionary you flip through
when everything is numb,
and only battle wounds of paper cuts will suffice-
just to speak those awful words.

I bet
you allowed him to tell you
that you were a weapon-
self-triggering,
horrific,
prepared to injure
those
innocent,
pink-lipped,
blue-eyed girls he stared at on the street
just to keep what you had.

But,
Miss Atomic Bomb,
someone had to have dropped you.
someone had to have thrown you
from your security,
and I bet against life itself
that the guilt lies in those calloused palms.

I bet you never noticed
the rope tied around your ankle,
expertly knotted so that he could just keep
reeling you back up into his arms.

He liked you on that verge of manic destruction,
eyes wide,
holding onto oceans threatening to flood that little studio apartment of yours
in New York City.

He wasn’t ready to let you truly fall.
He still isn’t.

So,
Dear Atomic Bomb,
know that that
run in your tights is only the beginning of the end.
The scraped flesh on your knees
is only the beginning of
the carnage that could be wrought.

And none of it will be your fault,
your *******, crumbling-at-the-seams fault.

You won’t cause the war,
and you can still crawl out on
shrapnel-coated limbs.

Take my heed,
little girl –
desert.

His "I love you" came swiftly.
Like the monsoon pouring down on a leaky roof
Those three words broke through my defences.
At first they were an ambrosia;
They sustained my life and our relationship.
At least for a short time.

Then "I love you" became an excuse;
For absences, and purpose-filled accidents.
And I ignored the warning signs, the flashing lights.
I pretended like "I love you" was enough...

...But it wasn't.
His "I love you"s were like band-aids on bullet wounds;
Like using play dough to fix cracks in concrete walls.
But I rationed our good memories,
I held on as tight as I could to our love
And watched as it slipped through my fingers.

His "I love you"s became poison,
That seeped deep into my bones,
And turned blue skies grey,
And turned light into darkness,
And slowly killed whatever semblance of love
I fooled myself into thinking we had left.

Take your spot
On top of me
Let’s dive into a world of fantasy
Making music between the sheets
Whimsical and beautiful
As two lovers meet
Whisper I love you in my ear
Saying it quietly for just us to hear
Blissful and beautiful as making love
Taking is slow as a flying dove
Being so close with you in me
Forever in love we both with be