crucifix

Somebody loved me once

He decided that my chest was a safe place to pour insecurities and my exhales were soft enough to blow eyelash wishes into

He used my toes to pray the rosary

He took a bite out of the poison apple that was my breast and swallowed the sin whole

He threw his seeds into my barren ground plagued by thorns and pain and cries for help

Wrapped his soul around me like the snake around the branch in the Garden of Eden and I didn’t want to banish him from my darkness

He turned cold

I turned fearsome and started twisting fingers around knives that would harm the home of my soul

Somebody got scared

We cut the hair of Sampson and weren’t able to save disintegrating columns holding these walls that don’t understand the meaning of help and could tell stories that would make your teeth melt

I told him not to save the best wine for last because I wasn’t sure if we’d still be there to drink it

He unintentionally washed feet in a river filled with tears

He took a sip of red wine and said it tasted like the blood that he would later cough up

I stole the oxygen from his joints while he watched from inside a body that was too paralyzed with confusion to stop me

Oh god I’m very frightening

We became ashamed of the way our bodies looked naked

He lost faith that love could open our eyes because he was scared of the mud orifice

I spat in the dirt littered with fingernail clippings and pennies when he left me

We treated each other like lepers

And I would’ve offered to tie his sandals if I thought that he needed help

Our loves' genesis wasn’t found in an empty hello it was bred out of the worst of all the deadly sins

I wrote him psalms that had nothing to do with the lord

And each kiss brought another plague

The beads of sweat on you temple at night while he slept on the opposite edge of the bed screamed “let my soul go”

While I slowly began to realize my life was beginning to imitate Mary Magdalene before she found Jesus

What they don’t teach you in catholic school is how bitter the fruit of knowledge is

So I let love go

I didn’t eat sleep or drink for forty days and nights while my world became flooded with tears and I had to choose which pieces of me to save from drowning

I was trying to follow a star to salvation but I realized it was just a comet forcing me to circumnavigate the parts of my mind that were black holes where love should’ve been

And even though I’m still desperately sorry for what I’ve become I can’t pretend like I didn’t enjoy parts of the journey here

Because somebody loved me once

And I have the scars to prove it

Do you doubt me?