And everything dissolved
Slowly
Achingly
Kisses on gravestones, butter
Lips dry on your skin
Enveloped
Lies across your face onto mine
Bodies revealing truths
Taking me aside
What a privilege
Solitude
Trust
Why
Too young
Too carefree
Unloading
You
Unloaded
Everything
Your knives in my hair
Masks protected me
You saw everything
Encircled
Hands
Formed
Shadows on my face.
Scum, you hid it,
In plain sight,
The traces,
I swallowed them,
Integrated you,
Bit by bit,
Dancing in a fire,
Shedding skin after skin after skin
Barely old enough to count
Your flaws
And crimes
And lies and salt in the name of love
Teaching me
What you learned,
Our bodies were supposed to be the same
Suffer the same things
And your shame
Your rage
Became my own
And I vanished
Found a little hellhole within me
You took over
My entire body
And nothing was ever good enough
And I grew old
As a child
Old as a daughter
Assembling all my children
That you wanted lost and never found,
And
Oh, I have found them all
And raised them against you.
You’ve made my bed and
I torched it to the ground.
