Rash Promises

In that moment I shattered,

Broken in a way beyond repair—

Your lies breaking through like a

Mangling sun, arms reaching out to strangle,

The timelessness of your tongue

Etched and engraved cruelly in my mind

And body—

Forever graphed through a union

Now false.

The fever comes through the lies you’ve implanted,

This shell now empty of the life it has lost.

Yet for this do I die?
For this my fire is snuffed in the cauldron of betrayal?

For this I am denied, the curse of compassion

Reclaiming it’s ridiculous rights over me?

You imprison me, keeping me still so that

You may inflict mercilessly the same stabbing wounds

Over and over,

Your poison dart erect—

That arrow of duplicity, that

Fickle part of you beyond all trust,

Becoming increasingly repulsive.

You want to conquer—you want to claim,

Yet such irony cannot be quenched

By your limitless desires.

Again I am shattered—

That broken vase you found years ago

Who you so cruelly pieced back together.

And why?

Why do you reconstruct what is doomed to fracture?
Would that I take these pieces and sever such pain,

Remove the life from its host,

The lies set within.

Would that I sever all things unholy, unwonted—

I’d rather be replaced

In the case

From which I came.

In isolate wings holds the key to severance,

The protection needed to escape your tyranny,

Your deceitful tongue—

You who pledges and swears with a black heart,

You, the epitome of all that I loathe.

You came to me—you come

Over and over,

With deceit and ignorant protest,

Mocking my unawareness,

Scorning my inquisitions which bring you shame.

And it’s at this moment—

I hate you.

And how to learn to un-hate you?

Or do I even dare—

Leaving myself open to naïve

Love which sears and scars

More than hatred ever could.

And why must I sacrifice myself in order

To serve your gluttonous urges?

Why should I abandon all that you once

Held in high favor—now nothing but

Fractured shadows of something greater.

To the depraved mirror your eyes

Cement—longing for what

You already possess.

But your ignorance is your greatest folly,

So easily thwarted by another’s caress.

And for this I am put back together?
Such cruelty.

Save me no more

And let me whither,

You covetous bastard.

Do not mourn the barbered flower

Without observing the shears in your

Stained hand.

Copyright © 2008 by Melanie Faith