The Public in Dear love

Dear love,

The further away from you I get, the more clear it becomes. The more I talk about what I experienced, the more obvious things get. And I can’t talk about it. You’re clever that way. Your departure and our break was so well done that there’s no where for me to go to speak.

My words are mute birds in a cage of your making. They could be your undoing, to speak of what I experienced, of what I feel, and of what I know. You would become allergic to feathers and explode into hives at the mention of them. I wish they terrified you as you scare me. I wish you knew how much I see now, and how much damage you’ve done.

I wish you cared to know and didn’t abandon me, the largest casualty (besides yourself) in the unending war in your head. It feels like I betrayed, because I gave up. I gave up on you, did you know? I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t breathe in your toxins and try to blow them out. My lungs were turning black and my insides were sick with you.

You permeated my soul with lies. In one breath I was all you wanted, in the next I was nothing you wanted, I was always the victim, always the one making you feel terrible. Emotional whiplash of Shakespearean qualities. Woman as devil, woman as temptress, woman as innocent to be saved, woman as madman. If I wasn’t crazy then I was making you crazy. If I wasn’t supporting and loving, for those moments I had my own identity and wouldn’t play your game, then you were lonely and that was my fault too.

Everything on me. My skin still smells like the pain you infected me with. No amount of soap or cardamom will get it out. Lady MacBeth’s spots flicker over my hands and heart. I keep Ophelia’s flowers by the window, remembering what men did to her. What you did to me.

The flowers keep score.

All our love,
The daisies and the rue