"I don’t write poems about him.He loved me. That isn’t always a good thing.The road to hell is..."

“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 say
This 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.”

-

BRUISES by Ashe Vernon

This is a sneak peak of some of the never-before-seen content in my new book, Wrong Side of a Fistfight, which you can purchase here!

(via latenightcornerstore)