letters. (revised 2016)

to the first lover,
I never quite understood how quickly you could steal the oxygen from my lungs by merely closing your bedroom door or dragging your fingertips along the back of your worn down couch as you sauntered by. Or how your eyes made me feel the equivalent of 120 proof whiskey, scolding and racing through my cool toned veins. How your laugh, talk, smile, walk taught my fingers to scribble down nonsense in my prepubescent years, that I would learn to hide in my pillowcase and sleep on all of my problems, a habit that would develop and continue well into my twenties. Overall, I'm still dumbfounded how you had the ability to vomit sentences of radiation to sink into my skin and infect my whole body with a livid rage that would consume me, almost completely. I went without antidote for five years.


to the dark one,
You were the first thing that made me feel something after going numb. I'm told something is better than nothing. You spoke to me in ways I couldn't comprehend, but I thought I could interpret it by your intentions. I thought you were the light in my life, but after spending a day with you between the red and blue striped bedsheets, the candle's flames had been blown out by my gasps for help. You'd touch my face, tell me three words with lust entangled through your rotten teeth. Your hands began to wander from my neck to chest. Stop, STOP, stopped as I told you so, and you did. Relieved, I went to catch my breath, but your hand plunged through my ribs on the inhale, exhaled on the sight of a beating red mass of mess being torn from my supporting organs. When I screamed at you for the pain inflicted, all that escaped your scabbed lips was "quit bleeding on my bedsheets".


to the intoxicated one,
You were faithful and you held me up when I was weak. You made sure to creep into every part of my body that I utterly despised and take over. You made me feel accepted when society screamed insecurities in my ear. You made me feel untouchable. But coming down from the high, I realize how frail you made me, how I became so addicted and conflicted, led me to wander aimlessly through a vermin infested catacomb of problems. No amount of bittersweet manipulations will ever encourage me to pick up your poison again. I'm hungover you.


to the sociopath,
you have and never will own my mind, body, or soul.


and to myself
congratulations, you're alive.