--
1.
We all wear our monstrosities and scars even if we’ve learned to hide them well.
2.
It’s easy to accuse
a wolf-hearted, shrewd woman
of inhumanity,
but it is my very humanity
that limits me.
It isn’t that I cannot,
will not
forgive you,
but that you have exhausted me
of every drop of patience
and adoration
I have.
3.
What more could you possibly take from me?
What more could I possibly give?
4.
Remember those spring storms?
Remember those 3am poems?
Remember the tender yet cutting smell of cloves?
Remember your avoidance?
Remember the tears?
Remember the begging?
5.
You are battered by everything
you try so hard to forget
and burn away.
I am battered by my inability
to let it all the fuck go.
6.
This ceremony of nostalgia
is mine and mine alone.
If you were to approach me
in person,
I’d have nothing to say to you.
7.
I’m tired of this city,
I’m tired of it avoiding telling me
that it’s tired of me too.
8.
Marked, marred, marooned, married.
9.
Others make me sick but you,
an ocean of a girl
always gave me nausea
10.
There is no greater pain
than the curse a historian
burdened with those
who only love forgetting
11.
You tried to lie about what you told me,
but upon my parroting back your words
with photographic precision,
you fell silent.
12.
When I die,
all of this will seep from me
into the earth,
and the roots
that spring from my rotting chest
will bend and twist
with beauty and anger.