treatswords

I don’t want to make my healing about you, so I do my best to forget.

But five years is a long time and I find your sour words appearing while I
wash dishes.

Blue suds on my hands, the words, “You needed that.” Foaming from
your mouth.

You flounder off of me, a place you weren’t often.

Sex with you was something I had to fake.

My body on top of your round stomach, beard hair like thread caught between
my teeth.

My eyes were closed, but you couldn’t tell.

I left it dark on purpose.

Wet pillowcase after we were done. You never knew I cried.

But couldn’t you feel it?

The way my body didn’t fold into yours?

Stiff. Surviving. Hanging on to the end.

Get through this.

You can make it.

He shouldn’t be much longer.

Why is this taking so long?

This is not about you; this is for him.

Please finish.

Oh, thank God.

If I slept with you often, a check mark off my to-do list, I thought you
wouldn’t cheat.

I should have known better after seeing the pink hickey smudged like lipstick
below the tattoo on your neck that spelled out your mother’s name.

I try not to make my healing about you.

But the way I revolt from physical touch causes me to taste you.

Dirty, sweaty, sour. A presence I want to shower from.

In five years, we cuddled once.

I can’t even remember what wrapped our bodies around one another, a string
that felt unnatural to tie.

I’m still learning how to hold onto my partner, over two years later.

My partner in the kitchen, cooking dinner. I can hear the thought scribbling
across my mind like subtitles.

Go, Give him a hug.

And so, I do. I listen to the voice in my mind, the candle wick in my dark
room that reminds me its normal to hold someone I love.

I am thankful for the words that guide me, without them I am not sure my
hands would know where to fall.

Around his waist.

Once they are there wrapped like a vine they feel right.

In a king-sized bed, too big for us, I wake, and the thought types itself
out.

Cuddle him, move closer, that‘s it. Now, place your
head on his chest. It is scratchy, but that feels right…. right?

And I hate you for that.

I can’t help it. I try so hard not to have that word in my vocabulary, but
it takes a special tone when I unintentionally think of you.

It’s the same tone my dad used when I was a kid caught doing something I shouldn’t be doing.

Finger near the face, spit following hot words.

And me cowering, small dog, tail between its legs, just where you
liked me.

The honeymoon phase my partner and I had was a beautiful Band-Aid for the
wound you caused.

It sparkled, gold, so authentic I tried to use it as currency.

It peeled off, the way the honeymoon phase always does, and I am left, doing
dishes, seeing your degrading words foam on a greasy baking pan.

I can hear your voice now, hovering over your newborn child.

“I can’t make you feel anything. You choose how you feel.”

Well, I am telling you, fuck that. Fuck you.

Here is how, even years later, you still make me feel.

Worthless

Hatred

Hopeless

Numb

Lackluster

Angry

Dirty

Disgusting

Complacent

Undeserving

I used to love, love. I really did.

A soulmate, I dreamt.

One single person that leapt across my sky, green waves dancing across the
moon like a heart monitor.

And now I find myself rejecting it, wanting to tie it with a bow and give it
away.

Love for sale, love for sale, fifty cents a pack!

I don’t want to make my healing about you because it isn’t.

My healing is mine and mine alone to keep.

But I can’t ignore the trauma, my trauma is yours and I wish you would have
kept it.

You came holding it in a box wrapped in navy and left it inside of me.

I’m not sure I can ever rid myself of the trauma you bestowed into my life.

But every time I shower, I imagine the navy washing off, leaving rings in my
tub.

Bleach in hand, I scrub you, but you never leave. I fear you will be a deep
blue ring I always have to bear.

COVID put me in isolation, and I thought you’d left my quiet space.

But you’re there, in my apartment, black mold.

Sneaky, growing beneath and underneath wood and brick I can’t see.

My lungs hurt; I develop a nagging cough that won’t leave for months.

But eventually, I find you.

Beneath the thick white coat of paint, the landlord tried to hide you with.

Black, fuzzy, decay.

I claw at you with my nails.

Aware it could make me sick, but that is how badly I want to rid my space of
you.

And yet somehow, I am digging deeper and deeper, digging myself a hole in
you.

Because you made believe that was all I deserved.

To burry myself in mold and to belong there.

But I have been working hard to clean you out and I will fight until my last
breath to keep you there. Out, on the grass somewhere, near the side of the road,
thumb up, hoping someone, anyone will pick you up.

I never opened my window, but you found a way to slip in, unscathed.

And now I am here with a can of gasoline, ready to combust my entire floor-my core,
just to smoke you out.

But my fuel doesn’t come in a red, plastic container.

It comes through therapy.

Sitting across from someone on a couch, who can sift you out of me.

Strain my blood until there is nothing but a clump of black left in the wire
mesh.

I will toss it out the window, watching it fall onto the street.

And I will sit there until the sun disappears, watching wet tires trample
you.