A Love that Wounds

Soft hands

cruel cause

I broke beneath

his necrotizing touch

a ghost

in love with

decay

starving for

the rot that wore

his face

You see

I craved the way

his putrefaction made me feel

how the very rot of him
fed the parts of me

that had long

since died

He sang

to me in the

language

of ruin

Pressed promises

into my skin like bruises

Each kiss

a funeral

I begged

to attend

I loved him

past my suffering

Past the grave

where my name

grew moss

Because I

I starved

for the rot

that wore
his face

Hungering not for

the man I once knew

But for the ruin

he had become

The wreckage

he carried

The brokenness

that was him

And in that ruin
I found my salvation

I gave him

all the tender parts

My throat

My dreams

My whole heart

And he hollowed

me out like a cathedral
waiting for collapse

And still

I wore his ruin

like a bridal veil

Drank his silence

like sacrament

Bled

myself

empty

To mirror

his hunger

Yet

The deeper

I loved

The more

marrow

he stole

The quiet

suffocating kiss

of dissolution

That spoke louder

than anything

he'd ever said

to me

You see

He needed

the slow

erosion

Of my soul
to echo in

the slow

destruction

of his

Because

I licked the salt

from the edge

of his scars

While I

pressed my

fading lips

To the crumbling

altar of his name

Forever worshipping
what withered me

In the dim afterglow

of our undoing

I learned

to find beauty
in every splintered

piece of myself
he left behind

Like a

beautiful

sickness

Because

Because I have

a love that

does not

protect

I have a love

that wounds

I love someone

who has no idea

how to hold a heart

And

I've been too loyal

to a man who

don't deserve it

I don’t have to

keep breaking

to prove my love

I don’t have to

keep sacrificing

my peace

Just to

keep him

comfortable

in his damage

I feel every

single word

like a heartbeat

in the dark

I feel every

knife in my back

Because

his love

it never

chooses

Me

So I

I built bridges

with broken bones

Begging him

to meet me

halfway

But he stood

on the other shore

Arms crossed

watching me drown

Because

He thinks

my silence now

was anger

It isn't

It’s a funeral

It’s the slow burial

of a love that would have

carried him through hellfire

and asked for nothing

but a hand to hold

I spent

twelve years

being more

than enough

While he spent

twelve years

Teaching me

how little

I meant

to him

I am not

angry anymore

I am just... done

Done giving

speeches to a man

Who doesn’t

even stay

for the applause

Done sewing

golden seams

into the cracks

he made

While he admired

other people’s mosaics

I will not unlove you

I don’t know how

But I will outgrow you

I will pity you

Because

You will

search for

pieces of me

In every woman

you touch

Only to find

echoes

Because

I was the miracle

I was relentless

I was unconditional

I was the one

who stayed

Long after you

stopped deserving me

And someday

in a silence colder

than the one you gave me

you will remember

That you never

took the time

to hold onto me

You Will Remember... Me

Because

You thought

I would stay

soft forever

didn’t you

You thought

you could

Bruise me

Break me

Bury me

in silence

And I would

still whisper

I love you

Through

bloodied lips

But

You mistook

my loyalty

for weakness

You mistook

my patience

for permission

You mistook

my heart

for something

you could break

without consequence

But hear me now

One day

When the noise fades

When the women

you chase stop laughing

When your lonely reflection

looks back hollow and tired

weak and miserable

You will remember me

You will remember the girl

Who waited

at the edge

of every storm

Hands open

Arms aching

Offering you a home

you never deserved

You will remember

that taste of devotion

so pure you could not

even name it

You will remember

the way I loved you harder

than you ever loved

And you will know

in that terrible

gutting silence

You lost the

only soul

Who would have

loved you

after the rest

of the world

forgot your

name

I will not beg

I will not chase

I will not bleed for you anymore

I am the aftermath

of the fire you set

I am what survived

And you

You are just a man

who mistook a whole galaxy

for a paper star

Fast fading

Love and grief

have fused together

until I can no longer

tell the difference

And

I’m done bleeding

to prove my worth

By Samantha Pruitt

Author's Note

The opening of a poem and the closing of a heart

I structure all my poems in short breathless lines that build a momentum that mirrors emotional collapse and rebuilding ... It feels like a heartbeat speeding up