I don’t write poems about him.
He loved me. That isn’t always a good thing.
The road to hell is paved with
hard opinions, sleight-of-hand manipulation,
and phone call, after phone call, after phone call,
after phone call. It wasn’t right–
being loved with a leash and a shock collar.
But not every sand trap looks like one, and some
people don’t know they’re bottomless pits,
and he had the kind of hands Rome was built on,
so I didn’t notice.
Because they weren’t throwing hits.
But he spun poison so thick
you’d swear it was honey. I found
a boy like a bad high; I lost days to that one.
Whole years of my life I still define
by the sound of his voice. So he loved me.
And some days that word still looks like
blackmail dressed up pretty.
Never trust the boy who says he’ll
kill himself when you leave him.
There aren’t bruises for that kind of violence–
no way to take pictures, to sayThis is what he did to me.
There was a forest fire in his chest that I
would never have the water to put out.
So I held his hand and I burned with him.
I thought that’s what lovers were supposed to do.
Last year, I kissed a boy with the same name
and it felt like returning to the scene of a crime:
I was afraid to leave fingerprints. I was afraid
that he would find me–
jump from the throat of a boy whose hands
were nothing like his and demand to know
how I could ever be so heartless as
to abandon him.
He loved me.
That isn’t always a good thing.
I don’t write poems about him.
gamechangershow
amandla
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
