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.