Trigger Warning: Domestic Abuse
Ever since you left me to die,
I split away from who I once knew.
It was the only way I could continue breathing.
The damage you served her left that part of me lifeless.
Two years have passed since you drove the knife into my heart.
I can’t see your face contorting in rage anymore,
And your voice has no fuel in my negative self-talk.
You have left my system, but she is still here.
She takes over my body and paralyzes me from the neck down.
The screams will not stop,
And I can’t help but cry for her.
The girl will never understand why you skinned her of all her kindness.
She gave you love, which you chewed with venom only to spit down her throat.
She can’t stop remembering the afternoon you stormed in and decided that you’d break her fully,
Once and for all.
You set your game piece down, and burned
The entire board.
You played to finish and kill instantly.
After, the scene fades to black,
The story plays from the beginning, from where it all went wrong.
She refuses to love you, but she’ll remain broken by you.
If she wasn’t bloody enough from your abuse,
She provided the cold knockouts.
Playback to playback of the red flags and indications of what she allowed stabbed her in the gut
As her brain coos to its overthinking.
The lack of affection falls from the ceiling to tie her noose and scream,
“He didn’t love you.”
Her body goes limp, and I gain back control.
She and I didn’t deserve the decade of what he claimed was love.
She didn’t know any better than to love him, even if he was too evil to love himself.
He bruised her soul with his torment to further push his agenda that love was to bleed by his doing.
Truth be told, he was never in love with her or me;
He only saw me as an opportunity to receive the love he never could get his filthy hands on.
My body was the temple of new beginnings, and he ruined everything he touched.
Despite being tarnished, one path glowed in flames as my way to freedom.
Scorched and barely breathing, I stepped away from it all;
My sobs and his roar stepped too close to my body.
Closure didn’t need his signature to state his resignation;
The suffering I endured over feeling loved sealed the letter a thousand and one times over.
With the damage raised and shelved, there was no forgiveness existing.
I became the rage he poured over my aching body.
The agony could never be comprehended, and it fueled my hatred for the boy who foolishly tried to end me.
Smiling in the heat of the fire, I fought to win the war.
Two years later, I lay awake in the arms of a living angel.
His eyes filled with pure honey and love staring into me.
There’s no vile aggression that soaks the air when I talk too much.
When he speaks to me, passion tackles me to his couch.
My heart reaches for his whenever I lay eyes on him.
The love I yearned for with someone incapable of love found me
And chose that I deserve every ounce plus one million more.
Elyssa Latham (she/her) is a woman of words and a reader. Elyssa’s works express strong emotions that people go through and get the reader to feel those emotions alongside her. She wants readers to take away that it is okay to allow yourself to feel and that you can craft art out of pain.
Featured image by Noah Buscher on Unsplash.
