Broken Glass

Once given,
a tender gesture,
humble, heartfelt words;
brilliant beauty
of dazzling hearts, Cupid's arrows
and
promises of love forever,
stability, security, safety.
Among of the happiest days of my life.

A symbol created,
to represent the best of intentions,
I didn't know all that would follow,
what would be expected of and 
then stripped away from me.

Empty promises 
born of your desperation
with neither a plan
nor the ability to be kept.
Your panicked shrieks
rooted in a complete lack of faith,
in spite of half-full glasses on every surface,
terrible-two's tantrums
at middle age.
My humiliation,
powerlessness,
bone-crunching exhaustion 
in trying to head off the next
outburst
and the next
and the next.

Circles deeply underscoring 
bloodshot blue eyes,
I admitted defeat.
Failure.
My inability to fill 
the bottomless pit 
of your need.

Cupid's once delicate platinum arrows
and elegantly engraved laurel
now turned to steel,
with sharp points
tinged with the metallic smell
of your faithlessness and
my heart's blood 
dripping
from the jagged edges 
ultimately proven
to be merely glass. 


~ Mk Michaels

First Blood; Last Blood

First blood,
you drew it. 
Boiling our relationship down 
to a business transaction reduction,
like balsamic vinegar,
the fumes a cloud of acid;
I want it back
You owe me
Take that <smack>
all for drawing a line
when your meltdowns 
became too much
to bear.

When that first drop
of my blood hit the floor,
you lost any privileges
once generously bestowed;
My love
Time and energy I did not have,
but gave anyway
The marrow from my bones,
offered to feed and bolster 
the insecurities that 
echoed from an under-mothered childhood,
leaving me a puddle of flesh
on the floor because my bones
could no longer support me.

So it is business as unusual 
at the end of us.
You chose this mode.
So buck up like
the adult you should be
and not the tantruming child
I naively brought into
my heart and home.
Buck up
and end the bloodshed.

~ Mk Michaels

Stop

I see you.

There.
Sneaking peeks where you oughtn’t.
Where you said you wouldn’t.
Where you said you weren’t.

Stop it.

~ Mk Michaels