Tethered to This Heart

These veins wrap around my wrists.

I strain against them, but they tighten around me,

keeping me tethered to this beating heart.

At the sight of him, the heart beats against me

and I bruise with every beat.

His words slice at my skin,

leaving open gashes that sear as he speaks.

His glare pierces a hole straight through me,

like an insect feeding on a paper-thin leaf.

But insects move on, feed on an untarnished leaf.

Lucky the leaf, but not lucky is me.

He never moves on. Just keeps tarnishing me.

He leaves me here, unwanted and unworthy

But this heart still beats for him.

This heart still soars at the slightest graze on my arm

or a soft smudge of his lips against my cheek.

In these moments, I forgive, I forget, I feel free.

The heart stops beating me. It just beats.  

Then something sets him off,

and he forgets that I am not the enemy.

He towers above me and releases his anger,

filling the open wounds he’s left in me.

It blackens my livid lungs so I can't breathe

and scalds my throat so that I can't speak.

It burns everything in me, everything but this fucking heart.

I can't live like this, so I lash out.

Through a broken voice, I yell and scream.

But as the words hit him, they also hit me.

When I see his eyes brimming with tears of regret,

his voice croaking as he whispers I'm sorry,

this heart bleeds.

Blood pours out like molten lava,

burning in parts of me so deep.

It simmers there in the core of my body,

making it hard for the heart to beat. 

I thought this is what I wanted. For this heart to stop beating.

But it throbs as the blood seeps,

and that penetrating pain kills me.

I've given up this fight. I let it bruise me while it beats.

Because this heart belongs to a man I hate, a man who hates me.

I'm trapped in these chambers and I can't break free.