My men commit crimes. Their hands are covered in my blood. They rest in piles of photos. They’re not scared. But they are tired. killing has a way of getting to you. My boy doesn’t feel remorse. He kills and kills. Takes and takes.

Disbelief looks funny on a girl set on a conviction. I’m afraid of letting you off with a warning more than being hurt by you again.

I’ll scream in your defence, but those that know me will say I have gone mad. The hardest thing about my Blackness is that I lost you. The hardest thing about your whiteness is that you could never see me in you.

I laugh and jest, and all the while think, is this the moment he leaves. What excuse will he make up this time. All the while trying to hide the bruises from your crimes.

Crimes against … well people like me. He didn’t really mean it. People make mistakes. Patters aren’t our purpose, and I promise you I’m his. I wish I could say he knows better but I never asked him to learn. There is only space in this relationship for one weakness and my Blackness took that turn.

It hurts me more than it hurts you, to know that in fact they were right. I have to give up on my dream of being loved by someone the world deems worthy. But if you’re worthy of me I have fallen short and set my true self ablaze until she damzelled her way all the way down to your standards, and thoughts, and questions about my hair.

I am not something to be learned, or tolerated. Nor admired for my lack of self-contempt.

I miss you and I loved you, but not past the point of myself.

And while I still wear the glasses everyone sells, every once in a while I take the blood stained glasses off and see you in my kitchen holding a knife with me on my back slashed utterly beside myself. No, really, I felt as though I was looking myself in the face and asking how I let it get this far.

You were beautiful in all the ways I desperately wanted you to see me. In my eyes, the thought of you wanting me dazzled past your glaring and deadly flaws, landing in your contempt for my ‘difference.’

Now when I look into your eyes, I just see someone who knew. And did it anyways. And you chose wrong. Had you come to me broken and lonely I would’ve left at the first sight of disdain. But you lied that you had found the better way. That you can do no wrong.

I won’t let the pain of your consequences humble you. I don’t have the time.After all pain is best shared, and how much it must’ve hurt that you were wrong.