The Dwellers Will Read

The words over the phone sliced my skin like flying shards of glass through speakers and into my heart. Those words could’ve shattered me, each letter’s point a glass edge to my organs. They begged me to slouch in the slummed sludge of my feelings, to disappear into the thin air that didn’t even want me anymore. No one wanted me anymore. You asked me to leave the one thing left of me behind, to throw it into a fire and burn it. Though maybe that forced fire could heat up my frosted fingertips and ice veined bones so I could finally live without the plague of my failing love. Hopeful, I pressed the delete button on something that defined me, something that carved my new heart, but also made that slummed sludge positively warmer. It had made the town of miserable beings with miserable feelings within me slightly warmer next to the fire of crumbled paper and stories. My own words ignited by your disapproval, burned blue within that rusted tin of wasted memories. I felt those miserable beings around it, tearing each page up and throwing it into the fire, each word, each feeling until maybe you were happy they were erased. Until maybe it was all just a dream and only ashes were left of it. Yet, as that fire burned my feelings with it, I could only feel those glass shards of hate you threw at me because this fire was just one of many. Maybe I’ll forget that day of wreckage, and so will the rest of the world, but I’ll never forget my scars because the fire couldn’t burn those. So maybe you’ll think that day was nothing more than a plot in the storyline, maybe the climax, and my next actions are simply the falling action to a more loving life. But that was the end of our story. There’s no more loving life, no more love to give, no more words to share because you made me throw them in the fire that only ignited my emotions into a branding rather than a story. This story isn’t about you. It’s not about my story or your slicing words you tossed like daggers at my skin. It’s about the fire that you ignited in me, the flames that turned a raging, killing blue. It’s about how my stories will brand me forever, and you just seared that last one into the heart of the miserable dwellers within me. Whom forever will read your words, your hate, and your killing love of their virtue. They’ll tell my stories, sitting and drinking my spilling blood, around the fire you started within me. Because if my pages can’t be read by those I love, they will read them over and over and over. Until whatever end. Until my truth bleeds love within me.