i remember every second before the storm rolled in.

we only had a few moments of sun, anyway.

your touch sent an electric shock straight to my heart.

i should have known.

god, i should’ve fucking known.

—you were going to hurt

the poems about blood started with you.

dripping arteries, jagged wounds, tattered skin—it all began with you.

i sit down to write about you and all i think is disaster.

i compare you to a gunshot wound. to a shark attack. to being on the front line for a hurricane.

i think that was the quietest way of ruining me.

you took my poetry and made it violent.

after the dust had settled,

you spent a lot of time trying to reassure everybody

that there were good parts about us.

“we loved each other a lot, you know,”

you would say,

as if lots of love cancels out lots of abuse.

it doesn’t.

“there were good parts about us,”

you would tell me,

as if i wasn’t aware, like i didn’t write a poem

with that as the literal first line.

i think you thought that, amongst all the hatred and rage,

i had forgotten why i fell in love with you in the first place.

i don’t ever forget that.

that isn’t what you have to worry about.

no, what you have to worry about

is what i do with that first flame.

i might cherish those memories with a smile,

or i might rip them apart in my head

until i don’t understand what the point of us was

at all.

relationship status: it’s complicated (again)

we were okay. happy, even. i could smile at the thought of how you (i) would look. i would even be excited to see you (myself).

but suddenly, you’re gone, and he’s everywhere.

and i can feel it creeping in once more: the urge to leave. to throw myself into him.

at some point, i stop fighting it.

i’m sorry. again.

how do you light a fire

in someone

yet put it out

at the same time?

it was a constant cycle

of back and forth;

one minute i was burning,

the next i was drowning.

i no longer knew

what was worse:

to be hurt by you,

or to be in love with you

despite it.

scene:

we rarely got to see each other, but when we did, it was more than special.

there were three days where we were together at a convention for school.

three days of sneaking around, three days of touches and looks and words.

i kiss you in the stairwell, and you press me up against the wall.

everything is fire.

when i leave, you hold me.

“i love you,” you say, “more than anything.”

i walk away believing it.

end scene

ten minutes later, you made out with another girl.

did you ever mean a thing you said to me?

this is an angry poem.

it is bloody and it is wounded and it is angry.