i would rather bite off my own fingers, rip all my tendons, or claw out my insides than stay here in the prison you’ve forced me to.
if i watch you build a life with another woman, i will blind myself.
i smell the rain and all of a sudden i’m back with you in the city. the city where even with sirens, thousands of people, and too little square footage, we made a life.
i can feel it in the way your lips meet mine. your love for me is waning.
she looks like me, talks like me, acts like me. and i know you can’t stand that she’s still not quite me.
i do believe it would have been easier to have you ripped from me. because you’re still here, but i’m watching you undo the threads at a snails pace.
when i see you now you look very bit like the man i knew years ago except for your eyes. your eyes carry a millennia of pain, passion, and everything in between.
i wrote all day trying to string together a sentence but i simply cannot. there are no words, feelings or colors to describe the pain you cause me.
people tell me i will survive. that i won’t be able to remember this one day. that i will get over it. and maybe i will. but i will not forget. my blood, and my bones, and my cells, and my sprint won’t let me. they will never let me recover from you.
i scream. i scream so loud. i scream so that my ears are ringing and my jaw hurts. i scream so that tears well up in my sad eyes. i scream my life away. for no one to hear a thing.
you watch as the tall, mighty flame that i once was drowns in your cruel, unforgiving flood. and you enjoy watching all my glory turn to nothing but blackened scars.
i believe i was a brilliant poet lifetimes ago. but now the words fall from my lips all wrong.
peace seems so far away now. like it didn’t happen this lifetime but a thousand years ago.
the bed groans under you weight as you slip in bed. warning me that it’s not just me, but that you smell like another woman.
thank you mother, for uprooting my life for your own convenience.
you touch me just right and change my definition of holy.
i rip open my stitches each time you stumble back into my life. even though i know i will cry tonight as i stitch them up after you leave.
no matter how high i jump, how fast i run, how many cities i pass through, how many dollars i spend; i will always end up staring right back at you.
i have a feeling that in the next fifty women you undress, all you will be able to see is that they are not, and could never be me.
someday this same version of me will come sprinting back to my memory. only then will i see that her heart is out of her chest and she’s beginning to bleed out.
may is here and i swear yesterday was only january 7th.
the woman after me will see my poem engraved in your head, and the scars i left on you from clawing my way out of your wrath. only then will she realize she is far gone.
i’ll pray to little orange bottles or stuffy waiting rooms if it meant you would just get better.
my hands dig into your thorns because i swear they look just like your flushed cheeks.
two years ago i worshipped the man i thought you were. thank god i am off my knees now.
one day i will have flowers waiting for me when i get home, and glances at dinner with his family, and good sex, and actually laugh at what he says, and i will trust him completely, and i will truly love him.
in march, time goes at a steady pace, but tomorrow it will be october and i will have not spoken to you since february and i will forget that i have ever spoken to you.
i hate big houses. with their empty space. i only have sadness to fill it.
i think i hate hospitals, and the stinky hand soap, and a nurse’s fake smile, and the overhead lighting, and the quiet doctors, and the cold tile floors, and the cheap tissues, and the bland food, and the way you’ll never be the same.
i’ll pray to every god, wish on every star, and do all the right things for you to live through the night.