“I thought getting over you would be hard.
And it was.
It was months of spitting out words
like scarves in a magic act:
all those things you taught me to say
that I never really believed.
I was such a good rabbit, wasn’t I?
You could keep me tucked under your hat
the entire show.
.
I thought I would love you forever:
that your name would follow me
like a criminal record.
I thought everyone who ever touched me
would be able to to feel you breathing
just beneath my skin.
.
I thought I had been scarred by you,
never realizing that it was a still open wound
I kept picking the scab off of.
.
These days, I don’t think about you for months at a time.
You mean nothing more than a bad time in my life,
and I got better.
.
See, you were the one who fucked me up,
but I was the one who put myself together.”
- I Don’t Owe Anything To You, by Ashe Vernon
Published on August 28, 2015 23:00