Ultra Vires

By Maddie Caso

Do not tell me how to love, not when I've spent my life suffocated by it. Marinated and coddled, I do not think you're selfless. I do not think you have loved me any better than I could love myself, but I miss your warmth and sweet deceit. Do not tell me how to mourn, I have been mourning since we met, attended a thousand funerals of who you used to be. Perpetually tear stained, it's funny to finally be at the wake. Do not tell me when to heal, I'm embracing the pain a little longer, letting you linger like flies about my corpse. Slowly, slowly I wade out from around you, rear my head to the cold, let it prick my skin. It can touch me too. Do not say it cannot, not when it's unfeeling embrace is more real, less harmful than yours ever was. Do not ask for my forgiveness, the nights I spent scrubbing blood from our bedsheets, the time, my prime, I will never get back. I forgave myself in the end. After all, you weren't there to stop me.