On One Last Goodbye:
I believe it now.
I am not someone who is loved. It is not my destiny to give love.
All the sacred softness I hide inside a cage of bones and dismissive humor, all of the pain that never quite dissipated from every time I realized I wasn't revered, all of the words offered to me as tribute in each moment I was being pushed away... all of it nothing more than the carcass of discarded hope I planted and tended to over and over and over again
Just to watch it wither when the frost came and the wind rose and the world rotated into death once again.
I guess setting myself on fire was never enough to keep them warm, to convince them that I'm a place he can stay.
The little girl I once was
Crying when dad said he had to leave in a few days.
Crying when dad left while she was at school.
Crying when dad left at night without a warning.
Crying because I entrusted another man not to leave her.
One that held her and told her if she lost twenty pounds she'd be worth actually dating, not just fucking.
One that held her and told her she's his favorite nurse.
One that held her and asked why she'd think he'd ever stay.
One that held her by the neck and reminded her of her absence of worth.
I am not the one men stay for
I am the one that ignites passion
Reminds them they're alive
So that they can go on living
With some other woman
Maybe one who doesn't cry?
She can't light a match the way I do, he tells me
On a humid breath before he rolls over and says it's time to go
No
Santa Claus isn't real, nor the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy
Love
All things that came in the night
Gone before I awoke
My destiny is one meant only for me.
(If I say it enough, maybe I can finally believe that I never left his half of the bed open, just in case.)