To Make Monsters Out of Girls

by Amanda Lovelace

oh yes, i know what you’re thinking, but the poems you find in this book won’t immortalize you. these poems are the means by which you will finally become dead to me—licked clean from my insides like the last dollop of honey at the very bottom of the pot. everyone will finally learn what you did to me all those years ago, but none of them will ever be able to scrape the bitter taste your name leaves on my tongue . . . now will they, ? - this is your unmarked grave.

the only way i can remember what happened is if i sit down & pray to the paper & hope the pen is a believer. - to make up for the fact that i’m not.

tell me— are you breaking her like you broke me, or am i just that special? - playing favorites.

he may have gone, but i’m still finding his fingerprints on every surface of me. - intruder.

i wish i could say i have finally erased all the pained “i love you”s & all the desperate “i need you”s whispered over static-heavy phone lines. try as i may, i can’t do that. i only wish i could let go of your venom-dipped words & neck-broken promises, but these are the kinds of memories that were made for the ones like me who love sitting in empty parking lots

& weeping openly under the street lamps so we won’t have to apply antiseptic later. - the after us.

& yet . . . how am i supposed to believe he’s not just wasting time with me while he waits for a girl who doesn’t have to reach through the dark to keep making sure the other side of the sheet isn’t turning cold? - trust issues.

love does not need to be tragic in order for it to be good. the truth is that i would much rather stir to the feeling of his lips meeting my forehead at 5:30 a.m. every morning for the next eighty odd years than settle for living an eternity alongside someone who can’t even be sure where he left his promises the night before. - fuck those fairy tales.

sometimes the person they swear they’ll never turn into is the person who’s always been standing before you. - the perfectly woven lie.

don’t trust anyone with a cross hanging from their neck & hate buried inside their chest. - take it from me.

sometimes no closure tells us more than the closure ever could. - some people were never worth your words.

you’re allowed to give yourself permission to fall harder than the wine does into the bottom of your glass, but make sure you do it while knowing there’s no one you should trust more than you trust yourself. - gut feelings are a survival tactic.

there will be instances where you are the toxic one— where you will need to step back, apologize, & reflect. i know; i’ve been the one. but even still, that fact doesn’t excuse their abuse. - false equivalences. i won’t let you shut me inside an inescapable yellow room. i won’t let you force me to become the keeper of a secret journal hidden underneath a thin mattress. i won’t let you tell everyone i’m just a hysterical woman who clung to every word you said & warped them to convince people to join her in a manhunt. this story doesn’t end with my silence. this story ends with the yell of every victim who’s ever felt hands come behind them to cover their mouth just as the truth started to leak out. - come, take back your hatred.