Puppet

 

Trigger warning: rape, eating disorder, mental illness, self-harm

 

I have always been your doll

You’ve always just sat there and watched me fall

Fall into you, again and again

If it’s ever going to stop, I don’t know when

 

With your strings on my soul, you pull on my heart

Why do you live to tear me apart?

I don’t even know who you are

A million faces, but you never go far

 

 

You were the boy I thought was my love

Responded to my “no” with a thrust and a shove

You whispered sweet nothings into my ear

But they were simply nothing, just what I wanted to hear

 

You turned love to a weapon and affection to a gun

I was just so broken I didn’t know I should run

Each sweet word became a bomb and you were a minefield

The pain you caused will never stop, never yield

 

Because you stole a part of me I’ll never get back

Took it so swift, without a trail to track

You took my innocence, you took my pride

You took everything I was, my childhood died

 

 

You were the voice that I thought was a gift

You came without warning and your destruction was swift

Eat less, eat less, until you’re left without fuel

I couldn’t disobey, heeded each command, each rule

 

My body was a prison, my broken mind the guard

In mountainous ribs, my heart was barred

Each bone became a prisoner, trying to escape through skin

Each pound, each calorie, a battle I couldn’t win

 

You weaponized insecurity, and fed on my pain

What do you want? What do you hope to gain

From the destruction of a twelve-year-old girl

Or making a sixteen-year-old make herself hurl

 

You were the thoughts that always wished me dead

When I listened to each demand and followed what you said

Turning elementary school tools to ways you suppressed me

But everyone blames the person, the thoughts they’ll never see

 

How do you fight back against your own mind

Without destroying yourself, death seemed so kind

You had an alliance with the reaper and you kept up his supply

It’s so unfair, just leaves me screaming “why?”

 

Why would you take a happy, kind teen

And turn her to such darkness that she has never seen

Why turn her skin to canvas and her blade to a brush

And when anyone offered help, you made her hush

 

 

I still don’t know who or what you are

So many faces, each left their scar

In flashback memories during day and nightmares during sleep

In days broken down, too exhausted to weep

 

I have marks on my thighs, scar of a battle I can’t win

You broke my spirit so I broke my skin

What else to do when you’re falling apart

No weapons to fight back against the virus in your heart

 

How do you kill a virus without killing the host?

How do you battle something visible as a ghost?

How hard it is to battle your own mind

How to break you down when we’re so intertwined?