The Blood & The Bones

Those nights lying next to you were the worst
I watched your back rise and fall in rest
while the rage and humiliation
I held inside my neglected body
built and burned and rolled into itself
becoming something alive and vengeful
a thing far worse than what was given

All day I had waited
I had cooked and cleaned
I had loved and I had respected
did I not earn these moments of validation?

do you know the shame that comes with an offering often rejected?

And more than that
I had bent my will
changed my plans and my landscape
altered the name that begins all my prayers
thinking maybe as I knelt beside the bed
that became the coldest alter
it was someone else that listened
all of this in the hope
that at the end of that day
when the covers are pulled back
for me to enter
that I would not be left untouched
again

the blood
& the bones