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i. An ex-lover told me that I chew people up and spit them out after I am finished with them. They are left half-consumed, the enzymes from my saliva still working at their gnawed flesh. I cannot deny the way I used to toy around with hearts like a curious kitten, pawing back and forth at them until they served no use to me.
I did not know what love was then.
Maybe I still don’t.
ii. Jackson C. Frank’s warbling through the tin-toned speakers reminds me that even if I caught a boat back to England, maybe even to Spain, that the blues would catch up with me either way. And not the type of blue that washes over you as a weighted blanket, a calm that envelops you in peaceful slumber. But rather a blue in which you drown, that eventually consumes you in all manners of sadness. A dark blue tidal wave crashes into you, shifting tides and carrying you in its undertow as you struggle to surface.
Please do not leave me.
Please do not make me succumb to this spectrum of blue.
iii. Scars are just the remnants of an open and bare flesh wound. One day, with time and effort, they will heal. Topical ointments do their damnedest to soothe the tissue, but it is not a cure-all healing salve. Just like heartbreak. Just like the way you left in the middle of the night, in silence. A ghost that haunts me even now; to this day. Perhaps I deserve this. Maybe it is our God-given right to have our souls remain shackled at the ankles for all our transgressions against one another.
You were right: I am but a lowly sinner, I can try to atone at your feet, exalting your name and paying you alms for all the petty jabs and stabs I managed to get in.
But so are you.
A toxic flower with petals unfurled, yearning to bloom, but no proper fertiliser and care, so you remain an unsprouted bulb, your roots so meek and feeble that the former shadow of yourself no longer exists.

by Christa Lei