These are the words I woke up with this morning,
stuck in my head as I tried to force myself back to sleep.
If Love were a person,
they would be the most manipulative being alive;
a master of self-serving devotion.
a master of self-serving devotion.
Love,
full of themselves,
would commit wholly to the idea of being weaponized, destroying another soul
even
at
their
own
cost.
at
their
own
cost.
“I have loved you with all of my heart.”
“I am the only one on this earth
who could love you this much.”
who could love you this much.”
“Love,
love,
love,
love,
love
…
love.”
love,
love,
love,
love
…
love.”
These words,
these phrases,
these syllables,
these letters,
l,
o,
v,
e,
o,
v,
e,
they crawl out of me,
as if etched deep into my skin,
buried
within the core of my being.
Preserved so long in the depths of my organs,
yet
rotten and heavy.
Their stench,
acrid
and
inescapable,
matches their ugliness.
They’re grotesque,
vile,
and I could name every repulsive word in the dictionary
but still fail to capture their essence.
acrid
and
inescapable,
matches their ugliness.
They’re grotesque,
vile,
and I could name every repulsive word in the dictionary
but still fail to capture their essence.
But at least they’re out of me now, I tell myself.
They are out,
I tell myself.
Every sentence she ever spoke that carried “love” was a blade in disguise;
sharp,
precise,
sanitized and waiting to cut me open
for the world to see.
She wielded those blades with elegance, her rosy-scented hands adorned with Cartier bracelets dangling from her wrists.
She carved me apart,
dissected me with such grace,
so effortlessly,
so deliberately,
it felt like a well-rehearsed act from a theatre play.
dissected me with such grace,
so effortlessly,
so deliberately,
it felt like a well-rehearsed act from a theatre play.
And as she performed, she vowed silently to the imagined audience in her mind,
while I bled out beside her,
slowly draining into the void.
Notes From Above-Ground