You don’t know how you plucked my heart like a rose and it skipped a beat as you                  

whispered the sweetness of sonnets.

You don’t know how your breath seared as it crept across my skin, the goosebumps

rising without my consent.

And you don’t know the grin on your face, feigned innocence in your eyes as you

told me you loved me --

and I believed it.

For the words dripped from your lips like honey, but they were poison.

Bitter and corrupt because I know now what poison tastes like,

what it means to have words shoved down your throat and words tangled in           

your hair and words strewn through the hems of sweaters and the feathers of

plush pillows.

But not just words, no, that wasn’t enough --

Your hands on my body like hot coals and they scorched, they left scars and marks

and burns.

Maybe not on my skin, but on my soul and in my brain.

And you don’t know that you broke me, my heart in your hands

as I told you no and you said,

“Why not?”

As if I had to explain myself, as if I had to give you a reason.

“Why not?”

I crave power because you made me feel weak --

you made me feel helpless.

You made me feel unsafe in my own home --

you made me feel like I had no control over my body.

You made me feel like I belonged to you, like you owned me.

And you don’t know that this will haunt me forever, that I am ruined.

You don’t know that you have shattered me and I am a shard of glass --

Sharp and cold, but fragile --

Something unlovable because people don’t like girls made of glass.

You don’t know the heart-wrenching pain, the betrayal that grips me

to think that after everything I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me.

You don’t know that my bones crumbled to gunpowder, my lungs burning with the

spark

to set it all aflame and I explode,

I’m burning up like a star and I know now what it means to be the Sun.

But you don’t know that plucking a rose,

plucking a rose kills it.

My broken heart a mess of petals in your hands,

the blood leaking over your fingers like pollen from a flower.

You don’t know that because of you the silky softness of a blossom is polluted by

darkness,

thorns sprouting from the stem and wrapping like barbed wire around the rotting

petals,

once a heart,

now reduced to a sickening pile of ash.

I’m shaking, retching and I’m terrified to read this aloud because you made me

ashamed.

You made me ashamed of something that is not my fault --

something I can’t be blamed for --

because you did this to me.

You set me on fire, you let me burn and you told me,

“Look how beautiful I made you.”

And I told you,

“Look how deadly you made me.”