just like a paperback novel

once a month on the full moon, this is where you find yourself: golden shackles about your wrists and a collar to match encasing the fluttering of your pulse. the chains holding you are unbearable and unbreakable as you lie in wait for him with your ribs cracked open and your beating, broken heart on display. and he will come for you. he always does. momentarily free of his gilded cage, he will try to take your less than worthy heart within his worn and weary talons. he will scratch and pry with his sharp points against your dulled edges, ever-searching for a weakness or a point of entry. but for all his efforts, your heart will not be so easily surrendered. it remains stubborn and hardened, refusing to budge or be dug out of the safety of its own cage of splintered bone. his only prizes are the small pieces of you he’s scraped away, and something is better than nothing. you will let him leave with what he can, and know that he will return for your heart when the full moon rises next, and you will let him try again.

it’s been years since we’ve seen each other, and you tell me that i’ve changed, and i tell you you haven’t, and neither of us find comfort laced between these words. no one ever told us that growing up could also mean growing apart.

the stone structures of all your could-have-beens and should-have-beens have crumbled at your feet and now all you're left with is the grime and mud caked beneath your claws, a clay that refuses to hold a shape. this is the price you pay for love that’s been watered down.

my memories of you are restless. i’ve caught glimpses of them wandering in the dark and through empty halls, what-ifs and could-have-beens rattling along behind them like stubborn chains. they know how to speak in your voice, and all your words that came too late come cutting through the static, frantic whispers on repeat begging to be heard. these shadow figures in the shape of you, unrelenting and ever-present, are all that’s left and to be found in the places i used to find you, and the places you shouldn’t be. a haunted heart knows no peace.

what little love is left has been shelved in some dark and lonely place, put away for safekeeping or to be forgotten. whichever comes first.

how many times have you offered yourself up, ribs cracked open, heart bare and beating and there for the taking, to find the one above you was only enticed by the flesh surrounding the wound?

this rosary has always felt like a rope around my neck, and i will let him pull it tighter until the holy ghosts inside me have gone still and silent.

he says “I will take the God out of you,” and it’s a promise i had never known i needed until i found it dancing on the tip of his forked tongue.

you made me feel like you could have been the end of my world. your smile alone had been a supernova that could make the tectonic plates of my heart shift. i remember the night before you left, you told me to make a wish as though there had been something more than snow and dead leaves all around us to keep my universe from collapsing. i forgot the bite of the cold in that moment and i wished on the stars in your eyes then never told you that i’d hoped you’d find me again one day the way a meteor finds earth.

maybe the fact that i’ve spent so much time erasing the things i want to say to you, leaving ghosts smudged across pages instead, means something. or maybe it doesn’t, and i just can’t be bothered to give you more pieces of me you never deserved. having said that, the lead still stains the paper and you’re still finding ways to leave your mark.

I’ve been thinking about how you used to tell me to just be myself, but you never meant it.

i had always been taught to think of my body as a temple, and if that holds any truth, then that must make you God-like; dredged up from the sea to desecrate my holy places.

lately, when I think of summer, I think of

a star falls, and you just so happen to catch it before it can burn up or burn out. your hands shake as you hold him; a shooting star in human form, but you were never meant to save him. yet stardust can be blinding, and you wonder at which point you were supposed to close your eyes and make a wish. ( that part will come later, after you’ve learned the hard way just how hot star-fire can burn. you’ll close your eyes and wish and wish and wish and wish with all you have in your heart that you had never been there to break his fall. )

you planted bombs inside my chest, and hid the detonators in your mouth. my heartstrings became tripwires, and your every word, whisper, lie set off the triggers.