Do We Get What We Deserve?

love had a million different faces, and i fell for each one

Tossing my sense into a wishing well,
I watch it tumble down the sides until it collides
without sound, like the first time I found joy.
There’s no such thing as love at first sight,
but the sunlight stretching behind your head
and the fever in your barrel-aged eyes
could make me believe
in God again.

Setting my bones on fire, I beg the future to answer,
but things just don’t burn like they used to.
Shotgun shells enter the skull stage left,
marking a three-year one-night stand
I’ll never forget. I just want time to pass,
but it drags as subtle as a safe word. Bound, fragile wrists
keep spinning half-truths, and I become disgustingly aware
that functioning and living are clinically different.

I buried your baby teeth in the garden, and now I am
running again. An uninvited ghost digs laugh lines
into my passenger seat. Knees kicked against my dash,
they’re chanting, “stupid girl is dumb.”
Love had a million different faces, and I fell for each one.

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Thank you to these loveys for their inspiring prompts:

• Kaitlyn Sun // sad.magical.girl // fever

• sonja ringo
  // half-truth

• Alyssa
  // behindherteeth // as subtle as a safe word

• Noel Aquino (imandq), B (forgotten.dumpling), and Maria (ml.mecham) // things don’t burn down like they used to

• Alex Peery Clark // two.bees.poetry // laugh lines

• Letra Iris // tangledflxwers // i buried my baby teeth in my garden'