You said way back then that,

“If they’re mean, it’s
because they like you.”
Either we’re both immature now
Or the rules just don’t change.
Every punch feels like a pinch
Of passion to the face
Making me dissolve as I absolve his sins
With the washing of salty tear stains and dried blood crust
Reminder of cherries munched
Cherries popped, cherries crushed.
I give everything
Because malice obviously means
He gives a damn; kicking me
Into a state where I correlate
Cracked bones with kindness – Mom,
I think he likes me a lot
Every bruise burning with the by-product of a caress
That I guess may have lasted
A decade or so too long
They say when it’s real, it hurts
That love is not a walk in the park
And you know Mom, they were right
I’ve been dragged through countless bushes
As his hands hugged my neck tight
“Too…too much affection,” I tried
Gasping out as the grasping
Tightened and the clasping
Of childhood mental reference index
Eluded me past the thickening
Of an admiration tarnished
By falsified innocence – my heart
Is not broken
He is suffocating it
Poisoning it with passion, killing
It with kindness
He is blinding me with nihilistic niceness
Mom, you never told me
To be madly in love, is
To make me a murder victim
Why did you lie?
Why didn’t you tell me jealousy is
Not justified?
That the yanking of hair and gouging of eyes
Had an age limit
Between “like” and the loss of life, you lied,
That every slap stated maybe, just maybe
I had been saving him from hidden emotions
When does “mean”
No longer mean he cares for me?
When does the hand round my wrist,
Need to have a loosened grip?
Is he guiding me towards desire? Or
His own mapped-out destruction
I hate being adored so deep. Having me
Rolling in a fog where even sleep
Is a feared state of mind because the
Pillow beside me has a
Heartbeat of its own
That wishes to knock against my nose
Until my ribcage, to no longer arise
He is smothering me with a sweetness
That expired past grade school – should have
Bewared of the 5th grade bully that became boyfriend
The boy that boasted distaste secretly
Garnished with an interest that
Manifested into, deadly;
He is a dry dandelion: a pretty illusion
He is the weed in my garden, no matter how beautiful his outer petals may be
I held him next to the wind and watched
As his “truth” floated away and left me
With what you wanted me to believe
Mom, I thought with each scold he
Was treating me like gold
Flattery towards the point of a flat line
You always did say,
“Punishment is for your own good.”
Am I good yet?
As adoration’s left incisions that
Refuse to heal –
Mom, tell your next child, your son
That love is not lynching the
Life out of their crush, and to like,
Not a look of disgust.
Tell him love
Is conceived through compliments
Not the crippling of a woman’s ego
Teach him first, to use fine words over fists
And if another daughter, please tell her
That if the first guy she falls for
Is because he tripped her, remind
Her, this is not love
Tell her it is not a bruise.
It is a bandage
Words are not
Wounds. They are antibiotic