What have you done to me?
I can’t step back enough to really ask myself
Probe that pulsating black spot inside my soul
Which I shelter even from me
And ask whether it’s love I’m feeling, or whether it’s terror.
Were my walls so frail, were my guards so cowardly that they fled the wooden gates, the only sanctuary to my soul?
I made it so easy for you to slide yourself into every crevice of what makes me who I am
And shine your flame onto my insecurities, while putting out the rings of fire that protected my identity.
Drenching them out with the consuming, paralyzing waves of your dominance
It frightens me down to my very core how smoothly you owned me
How eager I was to be devoured and then spit out as a version of myself someone could actually love.
My will weary, my resolve restless, they crumbled under your touch,
Under your gaze.
Those eyes that have now chained me into captivity.
Only when you look at me, when I see approval in your eyes, that’s when I’m worthy
Every blink, every second you look away, or the furrow of your distaste creeps into your eyebrows,
I disintegrate.
I dissolve into the pieces of me that you’ve created. the pieces that cloak who I used to be,
And I tremble into an apprehensive passivity at the thought of even trying to scratch at them, clawing my real self out.
I’m terrified of meeting who I used to be and having to answer the question:
Why did I surrender without a fight, but rather, eagerly gasped you into my chest and let you infect my heart with the soul-crushing burden of being yours?
You own me. You destroy me. And you are the only one who can put me back together.
But the me you orchestrate doesn’t play the symphony that I truly, fully am; the symphony of my being.
But rather, you mold me into a melody, a movement, playing me into the version of myself that pleases your ears, and your ears alone.
Every breath I take is you. You’ve cut off the oxygen of my identity and I’ve allowed myself to die, suffocating slowly, steadily, stealthily into someone I’m not meant to be.
All so that you can love me. All so that I don’t have to face the cruelty of your departure.
Because if your love is true, then the fatality of your love must be better than the annihilation of your rage, or the apocalypse of your indifference.