By Mariyah N. Johnson

While sitting in my boxed up apartment,

I wonder about the woman I once loved. 

We played with each others hearts to the beat

of completion and bliss. 

and we screamed in each other faces with the sound of passion 

and pain. 

When she hurt me, 

I never questioned her faith. 

Her loyalty always caused my brain to run away

from the truth. 

And hide my strengths behind dead daisies that lay sly next

to the dead butterflies. 

Maybe I was the one that broke her heart. 

Shattering the love that only me, wanted. 

Or did my love become too strong for her?

Suffocating her of the freedom that her 

Drunk words spoke to me every Friday night. 

Running out of time, increasing in problems.

Crying on silk pillows in the dark of night

Hopping that the density of my tears aren’t 

too much for her body to handle. 

I tried running through the walls, the 

walls I built to block people like her out.

The walls that saved my treasure from being stolen. 

You stole my treasure. 

The thing that keeps my blood pumping 

Only kept you alive. 

Only fed into your lies and deception.

I don’t know if  I’m mad at you.

I don’t know what I am. 

I love you, I never wanted you to leave me. 

What is wrong with you?

Why did you think,

That for once in my life I would let you 

Devour my pride and carve your name into my ego. 

Shredding my pleasure, 

Tearing my heart. Into pieces too small for me to find. 

And I want the peace to be within me, to take me somewhere far away.

But all it does is still my teared up heart, and ruins my shredded pleasure.

I tried living with my devoured pride, I tried loving you. 

What did you do?