love is not putting your partner's satisfaction before your own safety. love is not jealousy dressed as protection. love is not confusing your body for his midnight snack. love is not being forced into anything even when he has you convinced that you want this. i thought my spread legs could heal his broken. i sacrificed my comfort in attempt to comfort him. even after he begged me to get him off in a parking lot. even after he forced his hand on my skirt in a movie theatre. even after i said no. we are taught to swallow our protests in exchange for his apology. when i miss him, i miss only the warmth. i do not think about the burn marks, the mornings i could not keep my breakfast down, mistaking anxiety for butterflies, and our first two months together i lost sixteen pounds to palpitations and weak stomachs. whenever my phone rings at night, i still think it's his two am suicide calls. every time my phone vibrates, i still lose my appetite. when my friends asked me why i stayed so long, why i accepted the roses and ignored the thorns, i tell them, it is not easy to weed out the roots he planted in me. i tell them, i was so captivated by the house he built for me, i didn't notice the locked door, i didn't notice i was captive to this garden of guilt. i tell them, i tried leaving but he held a gun to his head and i feared my escape would've been what pulled the trigger. we are tired of this guilt- this guilt that must mean girls with unrecognizable victims who fell in love with a warning sign. if his fists ever meet your face, do not confuse it for sparks flying or your body will bloom in bruises. there is nothing romantic about a bouquet of black eyes. i'm tired of holding thorns. baby! did you never feel the blood between our held hands? or did you just mistake it for tears of your own?
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deadroses || poetry
Poetry"we had a vision though, now we dead roses" now, why did she send them? these broken down, wilted, beat up, rotten-looking flowers.
