To Make Monsters Out of Girls

by Amanda Lovelace

that green-eyed boy may have left me for dead when he walked away with one hand in hers, but it wasn’t long before you stopped & offered me a hand d r i p p i with n resurrection. g - did i ever even have a choice?

(when a sad, sad girl with a mangled-up heart comes face to face with a beautiful boy who loves nothing more than mangling hearts, is there really any way it can end other than in bloodshed?) - this story may be cliché, but it’s ours.

if you start to keep score, can you still call it love? - signs.

you had years on me & i wanted to drag my teeth across the surface of every one of them. - red & wolf.

you had years on me & i was too young to realize you were the one who should have known better. - red & wolf II.

he’s something out of a bedtime story, but i have yet to decide if he’s the chivalrous man come to rescue me or the ravenous monster come to devour me & leave me screaming in the dark. - i don’t think i’d mind either one.

when day breaks, her monster tells her he loves her, not me. when night falls, my monster tells me he loves me, not her. i have trouble believing the monster loves either of us. - god, do i ever learn?

i still can’t decide if we managed to meet at all the wrong times, or if we just weren’t meant to meet at all. - for someone who doesn’t believe in fate, i sure do write about it a lot.

this love leaves bloodstains on my once-white linens. - indisputable evidence.

maybe i didn’t know what real love was before you walked in, but what i did know is that it’s not supposed to feel like i’m waking up choking on p i e c e s of my bashed-in teeth. - right?

maybe i’m such a night owl because of all those mornings you woke up & magically decided you - no longer wanted me.

the apologies came so frequently it was exhausting for both of us & eventually you didn’t bother offering one at all. - numb.

on the off-chance someone ever asked me to describe you without actually describing you, i would say you are the bruises & teeth marks i find all over my body without remembering how they got there in the first place. - this isn’t a haunting; it’s a hunting.

they say if you place a frog in a gradually boiling pot of water, they’ll become so accustomed to the familiar sting that they’ll lay down their whole life for it. i was that frog, except i didn’t need to be convinced to get into that pot. i was so desperate for a warm place to stay & curl up in that i took the leap inside with no convincing from you. - the cycle.

i can’t tell the difference between you & the dead of winter. - at least winter makes way for spring.

“why don’t you leave him?” they ask me. - the question.

“why don’t you leave him?” i ask myself. - the question II.

- i never knew you could grieve a breathing man.

when love wants to die, all it has to do is come in search of me. - nothing but a coffin in my ribcage.

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.

there was no comfort to be found in the pages that once pulled me through it all. - you took things i didn’t know you could take.

i’m the mistake he apologizes for only to keep making it. making it. making it. making it. making it. making it. - it seems you never learn, either.

there’s no such thing as deserving abuse. - let me get “controversial” for a moment.