False Indigo

I embodied silk, black sheets, but you were nothing but bleach; staining my soul and eradicating my thread count until I was no longer recognizable—until I was a simple rag, fraying and falling apart in your hands a little more every day.

You wanted me to remain small because you could tower above me in comparison; because you knew you would no longer be Goliath had you not had control over someone so weak.

You called me poison as if it had become my name—as if every time I spoke, traces of arsenic would cling onto my words, and would surely kill anything that came near me. You made it known I was toxic until one day I stopped speaking altogether, just to spare you the clouds of gas you claimed I brought with me—until the halls of our house became Chernobyl, and I was simply a ghost caught amongst the wreckage.

I was no longer me, I was a burden, “You’re too much,” I was unloveable to anyone except for you, I was “ungrateful” because you had apparently saved me from flying too close to the sun, I was a joke, you were “too good” for someone like me because I’ve remained dark blue while you’ve always been golden.

But no one tells you that men with soft brown eyes are always full of lies and will only keep you around for some sort of twisted self-gratification, and no one tells you that the first people to promise you the world will always be the first to destroy yours.

Sometimes, I wish you could see me now and realize that you are transparent to me, and that I know now I was never poisonous at all; You only poisoned me into hating myself.

—R.K.