i want you to be afraid.

 

i scrubbed my mouth with whiskey

until it burned off your name

but the mirror showed me

a girl with bruised lips,

bleeding rosaries around her skin.

 

i built a whole cathedral out of wanting you

and you never once stepped inside.

now i walk the aisles alone

collecting the candles i lit for us,

blowing each one out

until the dark feels like mercy.

 

i still kneel in the wreckage,

palms raw from holding the smoke,

whispering please,

even though the saints have all gone deaf,

and the only echo left

is the sound of my own heart,

begging the ruins to love me back.

 

i want you to be afraid

because some nights i almost call,

voice cracked open like a child

ready to trade every healed scar,

for one more minute of your maybe.

 

so be afraid

that tomorrow i might wake up

and not reach for you at all.

 

be afraid

that the girl bleeding rosaries

is learning to wear them

like armour instead of chains.

 

i want desperately for you to know,

that the dark i begged for,

is the same dark that now fits me perfectly,

no space left for your shadow to stand in.