I'm saddened because I am hurting in my comfortable bed with Tylenol and a cuddly puppy, and you are hurting in a cold room--no friends, no relief, and certainly no comfort.

You said awful things to me tonight about which you'll never get to say, "I was just hurting" or "I'm sorry." I'm going to assume that you've said them and forgive you. I also forgive your hurtful hands.

A few hours ago things weren't good, but they were bearable. Now it feels like everything around me has caved in on itself--like my Weasley gingerbread house last Christmas. Those were good memories.

This is not. You're in a place I wish on no one. You don't want this to go further, but it's all out of my hands at this point. I have to remind myself that you did this, not me, and I'm not evil like you said.

I'm so sorry it's gone this way. So sorry you have to pay these consequences. So sorry that absolution doesn't go down the justice system's throat easily.

I'm also scared for you, your family, your future. Come out strong, and please succeed in life after this.

For the first time in a long while, this whore prays.

EDIT

We shall not sleep...

I had never experienced luxury until the night you were taken away and I laid in my bed, feeling every fibre in my 1000-thread-count sheets. Dad put whipped cream in my 10 a.m. coffee the next morning, and I imagined you'd be standing for counts right about then.

No deoderant. State soap. Oily toothpaste. No dignity. This is lunch time.

I cut into my orange-glazed chicken at dinner knowing what luxury was, and it soured in my mouth. I am so very aware since the moment we stopped existing for each other. This is what I tell myself though you are more real for me today than any phantom touch, or bruise, or culling song left-over in the deep recesses of my childhood.

...though poppies blow...

I'm tired of the daggers in my tongue that stabbed you into spilling bruises from your hands. This. Is. So. Animalistic.

Love has evaded me all my life--there's a red and nude battlefield in my head with Cupid's arrows surrounding me in shrouds of near-hits and almosts, but I'm firing back to save myself.

Oh, cliche's.

This, I think, is the closest I've come to reciprocal love. It is also the closest I've come to reciprocal hate. Psychologists have words for these relationships--when hearts beat with fist-shaped squeezes. Diagnosis. Diagnoses. Diagnonsense. Tell me something I don't know.

I just wish that one last time I could shape your shaking hands to the palm-molded bones of my face and tears and bruises and snot could be forgotten in silent kiss...

in (the fantasy of) Flander's Fields.

I'm going to keep myself busy pretending to re-cover. Past relationships have shown me I can get over pretty much anything. My rebound time gets extended with every blow, but I'll make it. Tomorrow I'm going to spend the day with my knees in the soil and my sackcloth-n-ash body praying you-ward because I'm not sure where else to turn. You used to guide me, but now I think it's my turn to guide myself home.