As delicate as a spiderweb in a rainstorm, my tenuous grip on my emotions dictates that gather my words off the floor. I push all the things I said back into my mouth. I hope that you didn’t hear them. I feel foolish. I am an old dog that turned a few tricks easily lead from place to place by a few pats on the head. By promises that will never be delivered. No one needs to tell me that I fall too hard. No one needs to point out that I would give anything in one moment to know that the things that have passed between us are authentic. I am stuck on you. Stuck like my legs to the hot slipcovers on the day my father left us. I feel abandoned again. I replay my childhood in every relationship hoping that this one will somehow stay. I play silently with my toys on the floor while my parents argue in the next room. My ears are ringing again. The chills are climbing up my spine, telling me this is over (over and over again). How or why doesn’t matter. I am the shy kid hiding behind my mother, pulling on her pant leg, asking where you are. It burns. It slowly eats me alive, that magnetism that will pull any woman within your orbit. I have it too- that something that draws the glimmering moths to my exhaustive flame. I burn myself out each time I use another person to feed the part of me that needs constant fuel to stay alive. I sucked the marrow from their bones, telling them they should be happy to know me. The worst part? They believe it.



