glass hearts can't help but shatter

gun in the glovebox, i whispered your name.

pre-napo week

so i threw my head back and laughed.
because waiting was futile, i wanted you
right then and there. because running
from you was an inevitable torture.

this was all so simple, so cruel. a love
that runs on caffeine coursing
through my veins. your hand warm,
laced through my nerves,
which were stiff as ice.

didn't you know, when you pour icy water
in a hot glass, something has to shatter?
you laugh with me. i shattered you.

day 1:

it was october fifth,
and you'd come over
the night before. we had
the time of our lives.
you said--and i agreed--
that we have always written
our best poetry about
each other. you laid your
head on my chest and
said you loved me. my voice
was hollow. we both had
regrets. oh god, i hate this,
I really do,
pretending to fall in love with
someone else when my heart
is convinced i still want you.

day 2:

pretty little deflowered girl

do you know that pretty little deflowered girl,
the one who wears baggy sweaters to cover up her figure and doesn't know
how to trust anymore--

she resents that man. she wants to claw out his throat full of moans,
draw dripping black blood. she wants to hate him,
but instead she just hates herself.

and that she did this to herself--with her heart full of spite
towards her own soul. tell me, is she wrong? it was
all her fault, anyways. blood drawn by her own knife.

and now she's the pretty little deflowered girl who avoids men
like they'll grab her throat next. the damaged goods. tainted.
the first time she kisses a woman, she thinks--i am dirty.
and she is.

the pretty little deflowered girl who doesn't know if her innocence
was snatched or offered up at auction. in return she gets a body that
cries out at every touch, the razor-thin thoughts of being lovable.

once, she whispers it under her breath.
someone listens, they take her in their arms
and tell her never to let it happen again. and she promises, in part because
it is unimaginable. she is loved now--not tainted, not damaged goods.

but it's difficult to hold onto healing when everything
crumbles around you. she picks at blades of grass and tries to make promises
to herself this time, once again, she's just another pair of lips
for men to proclaim their pretty little deflowered girl.

and i wish i could have a word with him--the man who decided my innocence was his for the taking.

tell me, have you ever
been stolen from before?
did you ever hold something so
precious in your hands, so
delicate that you let it shatter?

i hope your conscience rips you
from the inside out. i hope my face
haunts you, the lips of all the
little girls you ruined.

you made me a woman of self-preservation,
i feel you should know. for years
the only heart I wished to keep
was the one inside my own chest, beating.

because isn't that the way to stay
alive? when someone comes around
and takes their piece of your life away--
you still have everything.
i don't have everything, anymore.

but now, i keep your secrets. i lock
them into my throat, to keep
when I breathe. to have and to hold.
my soul has been doubled.