Because finally I am admitting that I am broken and

Mostly bitter and angry and full of resentment. A prose poem of three or four different prose poems—I haven't decided yet. To him, and you... always different hims and yous. Unproofread, plenty errors. 

- 1 -

I love love.  

That same love I embraced like a friend and scorned me and shamed me and made a poet and a writer out of my mother's little lawyer. 

That love that turned me into a cynical realist, disgraced and ashamed by the half of me that craved the love that never loved me and mourned the hopeless romantic I was reborn from. 

That love that made me want to take the hand of the version of me before love's scorn and tell her that she was beautiful... So that she would not be surprised when she heard it from him, or him or any of the hims that would use it like a bandaid to cover the festering flesh wound they would open with their teeth. 

That love that made me a dirty secret. That made me let him fill me with bubbles and other things, but never meet my eyes—but did those other girls know he called me babe and told me how empty he felt when the people around him died? 

That love that made my memory sharp like the tongues of those boys who were quick to kiss but slow to care. Made it easy to remember warm hands and sweet words and forget what I deserved. 

That love that never loved me back. 

- 2 -

I thought I loved you. And you. And maybe even you, sometimes. 

I thought I loved you when you called me at two in the morning, said you were dying to hear my voice and asked me to read to you my favourite book. I later learnt you were playing Fifa the whole time. 

I thought I loved you when you gently picked up the poem I dramatically threw down a flight of stairs in sheer frustration with myself and how I had scarred the paper with my own madness. You read it once, twice, three times. I counted backwards in my head with my eyes closed as you kept reading. I thought I was falling in love with you. 

I thought I loved you, some nights when sleep was far and the air was thick and the heat was high and red was the colour of everything. When your voice, thick like honey and sweet like sugar, lulling me like some low, slow sankey, filtered through the phone. 

I thought I loved you when you told me that my jaw ticks when I am angry, and I cover my mouth when I smile, and I never cry where anyone can see. 

I thought I loved you when you said you loved me and I figured I should have said it too. 

I think I still love you. 

I think I always will love you. 

So to the boys who I thought I loved, who maybe I actually did, who I thought loved me, who came before, who hurt my friends, who I thought were different, who taught me twice... This is what you made me. 

- 3 - 

And finally to me, and the others like me.

To my friends who are with guys they are afraid might hurt them. To the girls who are sleeping with guys who don't love them. To girls who have cried themselves to sleep. To girls who are trying to make someone stay. To girls who love love when love doesn't love them back. 

Love yourself first.