By: Linda M Crate

do you know what a relief it is to be free?
probably not as you’ve always been a slave
to your own desires and your lusts
splintering into the skin of dreamers with your nightmares,
but you never met a girl like me;
i let you carve out my old heart so i could grow a new one
became immortal as the flame rising from the anguish
of the ashes and ruin i formed chaos into a compliment with
these own fair hands—
i know you like to play the victim,
perhaps you are,
trapped in that cage of needs and darkness;
but it is a prison you chose for yourself and no one else can save you
you have to save yourself—
i don’t know if you’re strong enough because you always sought
the easy way out and used faith as a shield from your actions
pretty little narcissist whose eyes lie
you are no angel, perhaps, a fallen one but nothing more;
i know that i was a girl full of broken and jagged edges still i sacrificed
everything i knew simply to be near you for your
sake
nothing i ever did was good enough—
so you can keep your heaven
it reeks of hell to me
would rather a thousand days of rain to kiss a flower than days
of endless sun lonely, long and punctuated with the pain of a night that
falls at precisely the wrong time;
i would rather hold a rainbow than have to break a gilded cage
so i am thankful things between us didn’t work
i could have never sat upon your pedestal or swallowed my voice to become
the submissive puppet you sought.