honey,

i get it. no one’s ever kissed you quite like that, and when he touches you, everything’s a little brighter, leaves aren’t just green, but about a hundred different shades of it. i get it. he calls you beautiful and calls you his and it’s what you always imagined being a woman would feel like, and it’s almost enough to make you forget about the bruises when he puts his fingers under your chin and you kiss and he tells you this. but you can’t take the dead thing off the side of the road, scoop out the insides from its rib cage, and make something pretty out of them, the same way the smell doesn’t go away just because you don’t think of it.

i know this story better than you think you do. your body will never forget the shock, the touch, or the sick hands it belonged to. $60 a week won’t be enough to make you forget, and, honey, if you’re not careful even your therapist won’t keep you from writing love letters to bad men.

the next one’s name will burn a hole right through your mouth, and it still won’t be enough for you to stop. you’ll let him rip out your throat and make ashes out of your tongue because he likes you better that way, silent and somehow still apologizing, only there to be a warm body in his bed and always a step away from dead. a story as old as time – the lamb in the moment of sacrifice looking at the lion and saying sorry. when it’s bad, it could almost crush your chest, and when it’s good, well it’ll be the only reason you’re still there, but honey, it’s a patchwork quilt made more of your blood than anything else.

you take your clothes off for the blade, and you take your clothes off for him, somehow the knife is always softer.

don’t you want your heart and body to know what it feels like to be touched gently?

put your mouth around hands that would want to give you pain and bite down hard, spit out his name and dig it a grave.

forget that thing you heard about love having to hurt sometimes, remember it should never taste like blood, there can still be so much left clean of this body if you let it.

i’m sorry,

the girl who should’ve been stronger when you needed her to be