There is no place in my heart left for you.

There is no part of my heart left for you.

You’re looking for what you want to hear: that I miss you. That it’s been a year and sometimes I still think of you, and the good times. The love we shared, being held in your arms. My necklace, you proposing, walks under the moon, making love with abandon till dawn.

You won’t hear it. You won’t read it. I’m not being stubborn, Michael Green- I simply don’t miss you. The time we spent together was clearly illustrated to be a carefully constructed lie. I did not, could not, measure up to the ideal woman you thought you needed or wanted, and the whole time I thought I’d made some terrible mistake and I was wrong.

I wasn’t wrong, but you were. You are. Every day that you wake up, every time your eyes open and you take in the shit hole that is most likely still your home, know that you are wrong. Know that I do not forgive you for all the wrong you did, for all the harm you sent my way. For the friends I gave up, the blood I spilled- the blood you spilled, for every tear I ever shed, I do not forgive you.

I don’t love you. I stopped, rather abruptly, over a year ago. I tried to rekindle it, but it was well beyond dead, and it’s for the best that it is. Loving you was killing me, tearing out my soul and filling me up with a monster that I am still trying to clean from my blood.

You write that you dream of me. Well, I can’t lie, I suppose- I dream of you too. A persistent nightmare that I am trapped in that derelict firetrap of a house with you, and that I cannot get away. I wake up with my heart pounding in my chest, cold, and anxious in my bed, until I realize that you are not there, surely, because my dog is asleep at my feet- something you would never allow.

You a cruel and spiteful creature. You destroy or disgust everything and everyone you touch. You play at being hard, and really you are just a terrified little boy, crying out for attention and love you have long since stopped deserving.

I feel sorry for your mother, for having to stand by you as her son. I feel sorry for the friends you have left, for having to put up with your lies. I feel sorry for whatever girl you are with, because you will probably end up hitting her, too, or giving her a disease she can’t get rid of.

You are nothing. You are the wind outside the cave, all noise and shadows, no substance. With every new person you lie to, with every new life you destroy, piece by piece, know that I do not love you, that I will never, never, never regret leaving you.

I regret staying as long as I did. I regret that I took the high ground, sometimes, while you wallowed in the low. I regret hurting myself to punish me for not being what you wanted. I regret giving up friends and my life so that you’d see me as good enough.

I regret, too, worrying that you’d choke on your own vomit when you were passed out drunk. I shouldn’t have made you roll over. The world would have been a brighter, happier place, if you’d have died on your floor.

The scrap metal of the human condition.

Impossible to ignore,
the strength to endure
this rusty, broken beast
eludes me.
Another wet, red scream
Another, another.
Keeps the paint fresh.
A change of scenery in skin
That's been too whole, too long.
Tiresome and weak and
glaring evidence of the cracks
That remain
A problem that will never be fixed.
A machine rendered irreparable
Unwanted.
The scrap metal of the human condition
Left in a pile of tears and
mistakes.
The path leads away, upward
And still the destination
Seems to remain here,
The bottom of the barrel
End of the line.
There is no fixing
The unfix-able,
The damaged pieces of a heart
wasted further on hope,
The illusion of love,
Better left for scavengers in the dark.