Broken (Like A Bracelet)

You’ve broken so many things that you couldn’t even put them back together again. Just to think of all the things you’ve had and let slip through your hands, like an elusive silver chain…it breaks my heart in a different way. You fragmented me and emptied me out and mopped up all the colors, like I was an impressionist painting and you couldn’t get the light just right. But dear…now I know you aren’t an artist, aren’t growing and aren’t getting any better.1

You came over a little after noon and surprised me, eyes wide and probably melting at your feet like an icicle—that’s all I was, something that belonged in winter, delicate, white, untouched but falling apart in your own red hands. Red; like so many things about you—an aura, a name, the desire that flickered throughout you for flesh for hushed breathing, rhythmic and ancient and not something you understood. Passion was never something you fully grasped, and it took me years to realize. You never seemed to understand the depth and the need I held for you, like a fragile flower blooming with care but your stagnant harsh light burnt it so the edges were wilted and browned.2

The initial shock at seeing you right there, in person and in all your idealized glory that swarmed and suffocated your image in my head must have been written all over my agonized face. We walked down to my room and you explained to me, you told it so well; that you did what you had to do so no one would know, so no one would know that I belonged to you and you were supposed to belong to me—you cast it off like an exciting secret, but it felt dark and deep and wrong, so very wrong. I didn’t want to believe you capable of harm, able to indignantly hurt me—I didn’t see you put blinders up over my eyes, its like you placed your own callous hands over my face so gently at first, but gripping when your absence rung like a bell, like a torment, like a whisper of a ghost, a reminder of all I had lost and all I had done. You were the eternal sin, even if I don’t believe in them. You were my spiritual wrong-doing, the one thing I know I should have never let get so close to me, mean so much to me, take within me and let coat my heart like black oil.3

We sat down on my bed together and while I was locked away within my mind—like a castle, grand and complex and thinking about how amazing it is that you were here, awed by the fact that you still wanted me, not feeling deserving but longing for you to love me—you reached over towards me and pulled me to you, pressing your lips against mine.4

They were demanding, and there was the softness the cotton of the blankets beneath me as you pressed your lips against mine, pressed me down against the comforter. But your lips never wandered from my mouth, they never made me feel safe, part of me always knew, always had an innate knowledge of what you harbored within. Part of me was suppressed but sensing you and your true form—Who You Really Are. And the kisses were like wine, intoxicating me, drunk off my love while you were basking in the lust of the moment, baking in the sun of no regret, of only living in this slice of time and forgetting nothing but the feeling, forgetting me and living in sensation. It didn’t matter who or what it was—it could have been anyone, and you probably forgot my face, forgot my name in those mere seconds in the eye of time. For you, it was good, it was simple, it was something you longed for—to give into passion, for me to let you take me beyond the boundaries—it was something you ached for.5

So when you started to strip me of my power of my guard, of my garments, I didn’t think at first but only when you asked, “Where is it?” did I momentarily surface did I just for a second and see a flash of blackening red. You were secret snaking destruction of twisting crimson wrapping around my young neck. You were taking all the depth and connection out of the innocent moment and turning it into a sexual escapade, something you yearned for and I knew nothing of.6

Somehow, I choked out the words; I mustered the strength beneath your melting blue blurred crystal gaz, so covered in the merlot of the moment—in this alcoholic, addicting fever you were so awash in, so drowned in the temptation of pristine skin. I swallowed down my walk-all-over-me/anything-for-you attitude and said to you, “I want to…I…I want to wait.”7

I got it out and into the open, receptive air, so much like me. It felt like a disappointment retreating back into you, winding back like a serpent deciding not to frame Eve. There was a breath of white light within my lungs, and at that moment, at that tombstone in time I felt so sure that there would be another time in the forsaken future where it could burn, take place like a candle. I felt so sure that you would respect me and understand and wait with me until I felt older, more mature and ready for that kind of decision. 8

The time for that explicit decision was not now, not then, (not ever between you and I—make no mistake). Not when the light filtered through the windows from beyond the towering lush lilac bushes, blocking my window from the outside world like a dream catcher—only letting fragments through. Only pieces of you got through so I couldn’t see the full picture, so stained and scarlet, muddied through your actions.9

And now, sitting and contemplating this rash, radical moment, did you think about how you were attached to two girls at the same time? Did you recall how you broke my heart and gave me back (most of the) pieces, shattered like a mirror; and stained glass doesn’t plaster back together too well it just stays forever damaged—10

Forever, the word you taught me to know the true meaning of. Eternal, the mystery that you showed me doesn’t exist. Long lasting seemed like a myth, like a lie, like a fairy tale, like faeries and moonlight and magic and pegasus wings fluttering quietly, a hshhhh sound in the bright sky I beheld in your eyes.11

You probably didn’t remember that you acted like you “cared” towards two people, two souls in one very instant. Now, you’re promised to one, and the other’s escaped from hell—from the fiery brimstone pit you fabricated out of half-broken promises and blasphemous hope—and is chasing your smoke trail, your ashes sifting in the wind and she’s going to unmask you and show the world who you really are—12

I’m going to show the world who you really are, Romeo, Lothario. You try so hard to woo but in the end all you do is disappoint. 13

You have disappointed me.14

You were like a vampire bat sucking my blood, sucking my resistance, drinking my innocence from crystal goblets, breaking your teeth on how good it tasted how good it felt—did it feel good to know you were in control? Did it feel unsatisfactory, a sinking, slinking feeling when I said no? 15

You should have cut out my tongue, you should have turned me into a nightingale so I couldn’t sing in my words about what you’ve done—asking for pictures, ruining your future, your honor—going after someone so innocent, so fragile. You fragmented her and set her up and led her on with the same aspirations you so carefully placed into my mind with winding fingertips. You can be so convincing when you plead and put on your mask of charm, and you asked for a glance of flesh while you were so far away from her, from the soft warmth of a female body, from your betrothed. Then, you ran away when your bride discovered the proof, when, in a moment of weakness, she gave in and gave you what you wanted—not physical contact, but just a glimpse of what could be his.16

You placed a ring on one girl’s finger and kept pictures of another; of the flesh you wish your fingers could circle and a sight you wish your eyes could indulge in through more than just pixels and hues—you wanted the real thing when you already had it in another form.17

Dear Lance Corporal, you are Not Respectable. In fact, you are Nothing Special. You are a soon-to-be adulterer with no medals, no awards, no honors that could redeem you from being what you are—nothingness.18

Now you’re attacking someone I care about, the victimized Eve, and you, the serpent, snaking in and placing the apple in her hands when she wasn’t looking, when she was asleep. I watch silently, in horror, and she’s at the same fork in the road I was, all those years ago. Graveside specter, you will not be taking over from here…19

You’re battering your bride, you’re burning your bridge home, you’re ruining your aspirations, your tokens, your trophies one glimmer at a time. I can see a world where you aren’t at the top, but at the bottom, the Hell you created from shadows broken. Someday, Snake, your victims will escape from the Garden of Eden and be suspended above you, following you into sleep.20

Can you see? Someday, light will come to shadowed eyes. 21

You’ve revealed yourself to me, who has healed, who has recovered, who has come back in full force, forever changed. I’m all the wiser from this trick of fate, this trickle of blood in time. I see you now shrouded in dark smoke, burning up the memories like pictures—but they’re still cemented in my mind and I won’t let them go, no, I won’t relinquish my power over you now. Innately, I know of you best of all, and I won’t release that from my hands, no, I won’t let you get away from the guilt you’ve placed and sewn like a seed in someone who just cared for you, who just wanted you to want them, too. Your faithlessness is shining like a dying star and soon the edges will touch and ripple like a rock thrown into a pond.22

Faith—something you obviously can’t keep, can’t hold safe.23

I really thought you had changed, hoped you had become a better man, a better human being, but in a moment of true light I saw through when all the pieces of the story, of the puzzle fit together again in an unlikely but-all-too-familiar mosaic of what I knew you to be. 24

You’ve broken this façade of you, so all that remains is segmented parts, like the shine of a crippled bracelet, crushed, waiting for someone to discover. Like the twinkle of a tear down your intended’s face at the realization, like a prophecy come to pass, like a star dying out, like a fire burning down to embers, the dark returns and within it she sees the nightmare you have not become but always been.25

All you’re destined to be is a ghost in the minds of all the girls who fell in love with you and climbed back out of the pit of despair, only to resent the falsehoods you gave them like a bouquet of rotten roses.26

You should have cut out my tongue, or, better yet, taken away my will to live to fight against you to show the world—27

And I will show the world one reader at a time, because I’m the artist and I’m taking back my color. We’re all going to take back our colors and make you into the black and white young man you have become.28