Your Whore

It all makes sense now.
How unhappy you always were, though you never saw it.
How little you trusted me, even when you said otherwise.
You thought I was a whore from the beginning.
I should have known when you flipped out on me for texting your friend to check on you.
You had just spent the evening and early morning getting drunk with her.
You had punched, pushed, screamed at, and spit on me.
Screamed loud enough for the whole house to hear, with my son in the next room.
Called me horrible names and cried, with absolutely no reason.
We still don’t know why you did it.
And she saw it. She saw how I protected you by taking your keys away
As I wiped your saliva off my forehead and shoulder
That you’d projectile launched at me after shoving me into the garage door.
I tried not to cry in front of her.
She made sure you got home safely, because you wouldn’t sleep next to me.
How completely over-reacting I thought you were,
When you were more concerned that I texted her to check on you
Than you were about how I felt about being thrown around the night before.
But I know now. I was a whore.
You never truly gave us a chance
Now I see why every time we came back together it was doomed.
No matter how much you said you loved me you never trusted me.
No matter how much you loved me you always saw me as a whore.
When you cruelly told me to go play with others it hurt more than you can imagine.
You broke up with me and told me to go fuck someone else,
You threw me away.
I did it. I was desperate enough to feel better because I’d never felt so shattered,
Not in all the years of being abandoned.
I did it. I needed to breathe but all I could do is choke on your words,
And I knew I’d never loved like this before, and getting over you would take work I’d never done before, so I did it.
A self-fulfilling prophecy that you’ve never stopped punishing me for.
Your whore.
I left you right before my 40th birthday instead of celebrating it.
I mourned instead, turned within to my anguish.
I was supposed to spend that day with you.
I was supposed to start this new decade, new home, a half a life gone.
It was okay only because I thought I had another half a life, another 40 years to spend with you,
To make up for the 38 I had before us.
So I didn’t feel like celebrating, our 40 years were gone.
Four months have passed and I miss you as much now as I hated you then.
I left my home, my child, my estranged family to move across the country with you.
And the entire time you didn’t trust me.
I left you, went back to my child, and you begged me to return, why?
Why want the whore?
Of course you didn’t trust love, you have none for yourself.
I once had a friend tell me she admired me for believing in love,
For being unafraid to try with you.
I always thought being made of love was a gift, treasured it,
With it I could offer you something purely me, unadulterated by the incessant buzz of the city around us.
I was your breath of fresh air, the hand that seized the wind,
You loved how I loved you so deeply.
How the heat flickering from the bottom of my little toes could warm you.
The girl made of love who gave herself to you.
The girl you call a whore.
I’d cut myself again and again and again if it just made you smirk,
I thought I could save you, this girl made of love.
But I don’t want to be her anymore.
She belongs to you and I don’t.
I am not your whore.