She gave me cheap perfume & PTSD instead of love.
Said my name like a promise,
wore my interests like borrowed clothes,
mirrored me clean to create same,
I mistook reflection for connection.
Hobosexual when I met her,
surfing couches like waves,
never drowning,
always someone else’s shore.
All her stories had a villain.
Every kindness elicited a complaint.
Everyone who helped her
somehow helped her wrong.
She drank “socially.”
She lied professionally.
I learned the difference too late.
She cried I am misunderstood.
I didn’t realise she meant
intentionally unclear.
I gave stability.
She gave excuses.
I gave patience.
She gave performance.
She complained about the hands that fed her
while holding out her plate.
Complained about the past
while dragging it into every room.
She matched my rhythm,
my work,
my causes,
my grief.
Funny how she never matched
accountability.
She didn’t hit.
She eroded.
She didn’t scream.
She rewrote.
Reality became negotiable.
Truth became flexible.
I became smaller
trying to keep the peace
with someone who thrived on chaos.
Love, apparently,
was something she received.
Effort was something I supplied.
In the end,
she didn’t leave empty-handed.
She took my nervous system
and left a scent behind
cheap, cloying,
impossible to wash off.
And the clarity
that some people don’t want love
they want shelter, MONEY,
an audience,
and someone else to blame
when the roof caves in.
So no,
she didn’t break me.
She just showed me
what happens
when you mistake hunger for love
and pity for partnership.
She walked away fed.
I walked away awake.
Cheap perfume fades.
PTSD gets treated.
And here’s the part
she never planned for
I stopped carrying
what was never mine
to begin with.
Now I am PEACE, and learned boundaries for those cruel in nature. I bestow the love I usually reserve for lovers, and friends now for myself. UNTIL I know what is in the heart,
Peace Out