i hate rhyming poems

I was the first to let it fade 

back into the black from where it came.

God sitting on my shoulder,

whispering that you were a good man,

but not the man for me. 

Not the one. 

He’s not it. 

He didn’t tell me how to tell you,

how to pluck your heart from your chest

and tell you that I don’t want it.

A lesson from Him,

a moment of growth

that I handled as well as a child with a heavy watering can. 

I tried to try. 

Bad with managing the words that spill from my mouth,

bad at describing to you, 

a man with no faith, 

that God told me. 

I repented the idea of making it mean,

of casting up lies from Hell to hurt you, 

to somehow make it easier on me. 

Pain came anyway

for you

and me. 

So I let it fade.

After disrupted days of dodging calls,

hearing that my dad is mad that I ended it all,

you let it fade.

Finally. 

The second. 

Seeing me for my colors,

whatever you made them out to be. 

A cold, unloving woman

with a scarlet stained heart.

unable to utter any sound reasoning 

as to make sense of what was residing in my head. 

Then we let it fade,

we let it go.

You’re a good man.

God always told me so.

_____________________

I’m a self-hating, nihilistic, bitch of a disgruntled poet. 

I find myself writing, 

not to feel better about how I’m feeling, 

not to sort through it all, 

but to make myself feel worse. 

A form of self harm. 

To dig myself a deeper hole

and drown myself with run-on sentences 

and fragments

and ill-placed words

and anything that I think might sound like a punch to the gut.

When I meet someone who is struggling 

to make sense of their life, 

their world, 

anyone who has ever wronged them, 

I drag them down with me. 

“Try writing,” I say. 

“Everyone is an artist in one medium or another.”

“Just put pen to paper.”

And let the ink drain from your veins. 

Even if it means that it will kill them 

just as it has done to me and all my friends. 

We write some good shit, though,

through the cloud of smoke and the buzz of drinks,

our arms bleeding and throats hurting.

_____________________

In my bed, tucked away,

there’s a creaking up the stairs. 

What it is, I cannot say. 

I’ll close my eyes and I will, alone, lay.

In your bed, tucked away,

what you did with your affairs,

in the darkness, I cannot say. 

You lined the stairs with a bouquet. 

I saw you in your true form,

a monster in a storm.

Drowning in the sea,

not tossing a life preserver to save me. 

If you loved me, 

I would not have a fear,

If you loved me,

I would not be alone in my bed, tucked away.