alyssa

i feel like i’ve somehow seen the wizard behind the curtain. i’ve always imagined my life ever since i was a little girl as those of books and movie and songs. by god music was my lifeline and the one consistent i had. as i aged out and those around me slowly took what they needed from me as i did them, i slowly disappeared. i gave love and begged for tendrils of their love, even if it was brief. i gave myself to whoever would fill the void because that’s what they taught me. the lust and the seduction and the curiosity of a self-deprecating creature drinking and slipping into oblivion. i would take each and every one of them to the place where i live and they all pretended they never wanted to leave. and once the lust wore off and the mask of intrigue fell to the floor and they traced all there was to trace, they left. i don’t regret giving parts of myself to them, i just know they have no idea they even have it. some of the ones who live in the cell of my heart are ones who were never even underneath me, instead under my skin. i’m not of any significance to any of the lovers or encounters in my life. so it begs the question; who am i now that i have all these parts that sit empty? ASW // april 2025

when we were girls we were taught that if you just loved the beast enough, looked past the dripping fangs, the claws curled around a heart you were certain was good beneath it all - if you held a little more faith, stayed soft enough, malleable enough, resilient enough - that the spell he was under would be broken and you would live long enough to see the beast become the man you were promised; your reward for loving so blindly and wildly - and so i drank my poison like a good little miss every last d r o p we're feigning fables now, but not really. it's a tale as old as time. so we sit in our gilded cages and carriages of copper and wait. wait while the beast clips our wings, and the bars that once kept us safe, the bars we mistook for devotion, now hold us captive. until the clock strikes midnight and the carriage remembers it was always a pumpkin, while you're standing in a pool of your own blood, cutting your feet on the same glass slippers you were once all too willing to wear.

and you cannot be surprised when the fairy tale buries you in a shallow grave.

because he showed you who he was from the beginning.

the teeth were not a curse.

the claws were not a hex.

and i hope when you kissed my photo and placed me back in my spot alongside her you were hunched over clutching the sharp pang in your spleen and the palpitations in your chest split your sternum wide open and the pulp of your marrow that was once me, makes the sound of that of slop as it hits the floor seeping into the cracks of our foundation built on pillars of stardust and ammonia shapeshifting in a trench coat as often as a saturn day spinning on it's own axis from a broom closet no one is meeting you in. a talisman wrapped around your fingers as you play with the moon in your pocket, my hand in your back pocket stamps of rose gold in the sinew of you, the hymned-rustling of your keys to remind you and the smell of cherries filling the air when you open your nightstand invading your lungs, hairline fracture trigger flashback to the one you pulled on me the night we met when the sly reaper laid their hands on my shoulders and said "tell me a bit about yourself, miss" fact check, only druid, no doctor, only my laugh in your head shattering into a million tiny pieces and shards embedded won't let you play runed stag when sleeping dogs lie never far enough away ultraviolet chicory ringing in your ears and ragweed-tumbled tears your tapestry in an attic torn at the seams, a mirror image you would die to look at my polaroids in your wallet and words best left unsaid when you papercut yourself on the crisp edges of the book i made you of us sitting in a handmade box gathering dust under fairy lights entwined around your bedhead; aglow in guilt and the sheen of sweat that covered my breasts, dripping for you, wound tight by the strand of hair you kept me on, playing dead just to please you, but cash is a poor man's money, a thief in fogged-up glasses and a beanie while love like a sunset pt. 1 by phoenix plays. your justified modus operandi. ASW // june 2026

i put down the spade today in the ruins of us, resting my blistered palms from the depths of earth i overturned sifting for the truth in any given speck of dirt knocking on the slated remains of a mass grave of the women who wept rivers to keep themselves afloat

and isn't it just something that the women you tried to bury gave me more peace than you ever did held space for me in a way you never could those women have names and tender heartbeats and wish on stars and press luck by the crosses of their fingers that by any other name would be love

it’s broken now. and i release any part of you that was ever bound to me. i showed you what i thought was every part of me. i think that’s why it felt like there was a death. but it wasn’t you or even us who died; it was me. i was dying. you saw and felt how pure my love was for you and you, like the thief you are, decided it was yours to take. greedily feasting on me, while i was in awe of you. the movies i had watched as a teen learning what love was. you watched those with me, but you don’t own them. i own them. they shaped me. you will never be able to take it from me. i may take some time to disassociate from the memory of sharing them with you, but it will come back to me. the songs i sang in front of you in the shower and the music that we shared and the lines between them where i live sometimes; they still belong to me. those songs will slowly fade of memories with you and belong to me again. the poems and love-notes i wrote you will never be recycled and used on other people like you did to me, or to them, or to the girl you’re currently extorting. they die with me. i am in the marrow of my bones, not you. i don’t know where the “i love you’s” go after they die, but they always seem to grow back and my field of sunflowers will raise their heads to Soleil again. i’ll write new poems and love-me’s and love-me-not’s for myself and about myself and for someone who can truly hold them. i won’t have to fight for it or cry for it or beg for it or lose myself for it, it will be given freely. and i’ll grow to appreciate the parts of myself that you and others deemed unfit. the thing is, i was never unequal. i am enough to sit at the table and want that for myself. they won’t hesitate and they’ll follow through on their promises. the names i told you about that i’ve held dear for almost a decade, they’re still mine. you won’t tarnish their meaning or the want and hope i have of being a mama one day. i had lived in the knowledge for years that i wasn’t deserving and that “someone like me doesn’t get to have those things”. maybe i will one day, then again maybe i won’t. i know someone will truly want that with me and empower me rather than watch the despair i feel of each passing month rolling into a year of unkept promises and snuffed lives. i know of the sadness that took a toll on my body and weight i gained from disordered eating. binging to keep myself small for you. when i met you i was barely human. i still question who i am now and how hell really does have a basement. but i’ll lose the weight of you and the sadness i gained. i’ll look like me again. feel like me again. sing like me again. laugh like me again. i’ll sleep with my conscience and you’ll hold your lies tighter. and soon you’ll be so far from my mind not even the punchlines can find you. a forgotten joke someone wrote on the lip of napkin used to wipe a spill. and me? i’ll be doing some hot girl shit like twirling my hair in my fingers probably having my pussy devoured by someone who can make me cum and keep me safe.

that is my sense of self. i am more than two-knuckles deep. you should mourn the loss of me. you had me for more than a year and you only dipped your toes; i am an ocean.

you said all the right things you inserted yourself into my life in a way you had no business of doing you took my tender truths and wielded them as a weapon all i did was love you want a life with you

i wasn’t allowed to have needs and when i said something you would flip it around take it as a sleight threaten to end it all and i would comfort you all the while i was slowly being erased

you’re manipulative and calculating you’re a thief and a swindler breathing easy on this hellsite collecting and exploiting women leaving a litany of debauchery and infidelity in your wake then call yourself the victim soaking up your own crocodile tears in my sweater

you hide behind your holier than thou writing and your stupid little fox puns but i caught you out i caught you out every time you’ve shown me who you really are and guess what?