fangs and claws.

I look you in the eye

Write your name

With my shaky

Scarred hands

In a desperate attempt

To fit the key in the lock

To fling the cage door open

Because isn’t that how you

Escape your ghost?

You face them

❀

You look at the ground

Your reflection

Their faux reassurances

Anywhere but my face

Because isn’t that what

The guilty do?

❀

Admit it

I deserved more

Than you gave me

I deserved more than

Gaslighting and insanity

Eventual abandonment

And cruelly crafted

Unanswered questions

❀

You can paint your moods

A high vis happiness all you want

Wear it as a neon vest to prove a point

But you cannot escape the truth

You let me down in a way

I would’ve never done to you

You gave me the kind of brutal

Gaping, almost irreparable wound

I used to try and save you from

❀

You are the memories

I hide under my bed

Despite the way you make me bleed

You have no fangs or claws or horns

Just a face that is all too familiar

A face that used to look like safety

❀

I vomited up all my confidence

Labelled myself as unlovable

All because you gave up on me

❀

Yet sometimes

When I am trapped in

Rumination

I wonder

Do you place your remorse

In the same place I store

My lack of closure

The cage I can never break free of

❀

Do I haunt the space

Under your bed like

You fill mine?

❀

Yet here is the truth

I have buried my own key

Grown my own fangs

Clawed my own skin

I am my own cage

My own monster

❀

I have failed myself

More than even you

Have let me down