Reserved Nature

I used to feel your fingers wrapped around my ribs, like you were trying to hold my heart still. You’d say the sweetest things like you meant it sweet like the piss after a long night. But now it’s an inconvenient patch of quiet , that gets in the way of your noise. A disease caught from a dirty mattress. ‘You never speak anymore’ you say, like it’s a crime to be lost in my own thoughts, as if I owe a performance. Again I swallow my tongue, let you win What would it matter? Tell me I need to get better. Better at what? What the do I have to be better for? So now I press my fingers into my skin and wonder when the hell you forgot who I was. Or if it even mattered in the first place. ‘I’m worried about you’ you say, But your tone, it came from another room. Like a wound you can’t stop picking at, i’m a half finished painting in your ed gallery full of women. And you want colour, you want more sound. More movement You want me loud You want me ing raw. But I can't, I can't be what you want. Can’t tear my insides out and wear them on my sleeve. Because when I try to speak, it’s like my voice is caught in my throat, tangled in all the I've swallowed just to stay. I used to believe I made you feel alive, that my silence was some holy ground you could walk on. And you call me cold, call me calm. As if you didn’t see me freeze when I realized I’m not the woman you want– Not the one who could crawl into your skin and become a version of herself you could masterbate to at 3 a.m. I’m the one who needs fixing while I praise you like a fool, like I don't know you’ve already written the end of this story. But, I stay quiet. Because I don’t want to make it worse. When you’ve spent so much time giving, you forget what it feels like to take. And maybe that’s my fault, for now, I’ll choke on the words I can't say.