Love Poem: Because She Still Clung To His Promises
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Written by: Andi Johnson

Because She Still Clung To His Promises

The girl was legend

All empty eyes & purple painted smiles. Every sweet white inch of her. And everyone knew 
her name

She danced in satin skirts that only moved when she took them off. She was everything 
delicate, everything demure. She was beautiful even when she wasnt

She watched the world with terror filled saucer eyes & the world looked right back with eyes 
that were unmistakably green

It was clear glass, they envied her & she wondered why

She knew they hung up her picture, plastered her to walls&books&frames that made her 
their prisoner. They stared at her when they were alone & forged a kind of intimacy she 
could thrive on

But it was temporary & in the morning she was left to sing her own self to sleep since no one 
cared enough to do it for her

The people that loved her, that glimpsed the real her when she uncovered it, all those people 
left her at the end & she saw what they'd done

They'd led her down the wrong track but they peppered it with glitter & held her just right so 
she was blind to every bit of it

She was the diamond dying in the night, she was the candied rose melting in the morning 
dew. They lured her with promises of love & took her innocence before she even knew it was 
there

She hated them but started to love them almost obsessively. The love hate became another 
prison & she thought she was free because she always got nine seconds of pleasure before 
the sun rose

Back bars catered to her kind & she walked in just to stand there & let their hands go places 
she'd never gone herself. It felt like the past & she convinced herself it was right

One night she walked in, skirt past the legal limit & eyes bright like they used to be. It was a 
shock-making moment, she hadnt looked so sweet in oh so many years & they were afraid 
to touch her

She'd been their girl forever, passed around & used like an old movie that cant be rewound. 
They knew every mark on her body, every scar where they signed her, a kind of "I was 
here" of the human body. They couldnt recognize her. It was the first time she walked out 
alone. Faintly she hoped to be pressed against a wall & killed but it didnt happen

She kept turning around haunted by phantom-feels & ghost-touches. Her body just wanted to 
suffer. It was instinct & who was she to fight it?

Every step was agony. She walked so carefully as though she was afraid of falling in a river 
of her own dark thoughts

But it was hopeless, darkness followed her wherever she went