I hollowed out my happiness for you and fed it to you on a silver spoon. I carved out my smile and sewed it to your face. I bled out all my healing and injected it into you, watching as it emptied from the intravenous drip like oxygen leaving a pair of lungs.
There was a war waging beneath your skin like a fever burning you up. You had a kind of restless tension to you like someone seeking comfort in an electric chair. The weight on your back seemed to be invisible to all except for me and I spent months trying to map out the faint outlines of your sadness as if they were rivers and I might find the source from which they flowed. But the rivers were just neural pathways, the mountains and lakes and oceans all just lobes of the brain. All of your sorrow started and ended with you.
You balanced those problems on my shoulders and I helped you pile them there, careful to put them just so, making sure they didn’t fall, no matter how heavy they became. If I am Atlas, your insecurities are my globe, and you left them precariously piled there as if they weren’t already digging into my skin.
Every day, you begged me to stay, tying ropes to my wrists and drawing up maps where you labelled yourself “home”. At first my reassuring promises came wrapped with bows. Eventually, they fell from me like bark peeling from a tree trunk, only to disappear under leaves and branches and soil and more of your inescapable self-doubt.
In the end, I was not trapped by need but pity. You were dragging me down but swearing that I was holding you up. And how could I ever let you drown alone when you had once faced the floods with me? I owed my jigsaw puzzle heart to your old self, to the point where I would let your current one take it apart. You had healed so many of my wounds that I thought it only fair to hold still while you began creating new ones. If your gun is aimed at someone, let it be me, I thought. I’d rather feel my blood than see yours.
In the end, I held your hands steady as you pulled the trigger. In the end, I spilt my own blood, I suppose.
Your war was forged into a chain around my ankle. You marked yourself as home but then left and took the map with you. You wear my sacrifice like sheep skin and I hide your desertion under my bed like the monster all children fear.
You were a brewing storm and a flash flood synchronising like swimmers. The hurt shocked me like a stroke and grew like an abscess.
I’ve heard love can be as venomous as a taipan’s bite and twice as apocalyptic as a nuclear bomb, but I’m sure friendship is a sniper’s rifle; the kind of unexpected brutality that goes unnoticed until it is too late and someone is bleeding out on the floor, wondering where the bullet came from.
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- Supported by: Ollie
Why Indie and Otis Came to Love OllieSupported by: Ollie
Like most dog moms, the best part of my day is the time spent with my dogs. I have an 8 year old Pittie mix named Indie and a two year old Frenchie mix named Otis. Indie is my soul dog and the love of my life. She has inspired me to become a photographer, a business owner, and a creator, among other things. She is the smartest and most loyal creature who selflessly makes sure that I’m happy above all else. Most of the time, she knows how I’m feeling before I do. When we’re together, she’s my shadow–never more than a few inches from me at all times.
By Brittney Avery5 days ago in Petlife
Comments (37)
Very well written filled with much symbolism and direct emotion. Excellent job!
Wow the imagery is splendid and so utterly powerful.
Amazing, Poppy. Just wow!
You had healed so many of my wounds that I thought it only fair to hold still while you began creating new ones. - That made me cry! Thank you for writing this Poppy! It's reached a person who needs it.
This was so cathartic we’ve all had a relationship we held onto even though it was ripping us apart
Amazing! That was an evocative and poignant piece of poetic prose. It beautifully captures the sacrifices we make for those we love, despite the fact that the one we love is slowly killing the both of us
THAT ENDING! Wow, Poppy!! This was stunning. The emotional depth you bring to your pieces is always overwhelming (in a good way!) and so worthy of admiration. This is one such example...And just, I have no words to do it justice, but I love this. I can't pick a favorite line or part, but this is a section I really liked for its metaphor work: "Your war was forged into a chain around my ankle. You marked yourself as home but then left and took the map with you. You wear my sacrifice like sheep skin and I hide your desertion under my bed like the monster all children fear." Fantastic. Congratulations on TS!!!
Absolutely stunning Poppy! You just get better and better. That beginning, those first lines: I hollowed out my happiness for you and fed it to you on a silver spoon. I carved out my smile and sewed it to your face, brought such vivid images to my mind and immediately set the scene. Congratulations on TS 😍
Each story you write is a doorway into something completely new. Your talent explodes on the page. Congrats on this Top Story
✍️Amazing 🤩📝🎊😊🫵🏾Rock‼️ Congratulations on your Top Story Poet😉🎊🎉🎉🎉🎉🫶🏾
This... wow... this struck deep. I loved the line "You had a kind of restless tension to you like someone seeking comfort in an electric chair." I can't explain why, but it just conjured such a wonderful image in my head, it was as though I knew and had been that exact person. Thank you so much for sharing Poppy :) This was a kind of harrowing poem, but I loved every line of it
You are queen of metaphor. You so artfully describe the anatomy and geography of relationship, you provide the picture on the box where we readers store our own jumbled puzzle of emotions. Thank you for this amazing gift.
Wow, this was so visceral. Talking about holding the gun steady, wanting to see your own blood instead of theirs. Congrats on top story! ❤️
ouch-- i feel the pain-- i think i know the pain-- strange how something so well meant can backfire. You crafted the painful thoughts and emotions into beautiful verse.
Great writing 😌
Wow, this is absolutely incredible! Every vivid line sucked me right in to the continual crashing waves of toxicity. This was a masterful work of poetic prose! Wonderful job, Poppy! 💫💞
I don't know what to say. A snapshot of a relationship in a short piece of prose that shows imbalance, self-sacrifice, longing, pain. I mean,to be able to put so much in so few words and make it so poignant, so visual and relatable takes some doing. Congrats on TS. Wonderful work.
Incredible. Congratulations! 🎉
Extremely well written and very detailed descriptions
Wonderfully written!!! Congratulations on Top Story!!!❤️❤️💕
Some powerful words
That was amazing, the imagery and the build up to that ending! Congrats on the TS!
Congratulations and well deserved! ✨🙏❤️
Back again-Congratulations! This was truly phenomenal! 🤍
this is wonderful, Poppy