Calcium

I have found love a dozen times.

In a best friend, laden with familiar expectation and abuse.

In someone so traumatized they found coalescence in taking my youth.

In forcing my consent. In finding this very poetic account, spreading it among their own blood like a joke.

In sleeping amongst wolves, and claiming to be a shepherd.

I have found love, but never where it has meant to be.

A love broken and beaten and dried and shredded until its something to throw-

not in celebration, just as an add-in. Just as something. Filler.

And I have grinned and beared it.

Until I couldn't.

And then I was the villain.

A villain made of bone and little much else.

I felt like what was left inside an iron lung. A waking corpse.

Only feeling. No escape.

And once I found it- it was selfish, and cruel.

But what shall I do with bone? Clipper a clacking calcium song?

No. I will grow.