I’m Not The Girl You Fell In Love With Anymore

When you come back, my straightened hair and pressed dress fool you into thinking you love me again

(but you don’t. You are just staring open-mouthed at the adult version of the girl you loved and wondering why her hand isn’t yours to hold.)

We sit in a coffee shop and my pretty lipsticked mouth hurls every dirty word I know at you

(but it still doesn’t sound like hatred. It sounds like tired love who has given up looking for a place to lay its head and now is angry at what has kept it up all night. it is a child fighting sleep. everything would be better if it would just give in.)

You are amazed at my straight-backed resolve. When we were young, you were afraid the world would bend me in on myself and you would hear my bones cracking from the next state over

(and now you marvel at my strength. this is the lesson you always wanted to teach and now I have learned it so well there is nothing left to prey on. the teacher hands the student knowledge and the student sharpens it into a knife. you never thought it would be used against you.)