AN ESCAPIST'S REPRESSED DESIRE | poetry

maybe i believe her

with every stroke, she sketched
a version of me i grew less
and less acquainted with.
her version of me was jubilant, exultant.
she drew me as if i were beautiful,
as if my eyes had stars in them
and my laughter was a sweet waltz
and my entire being-i-was enough.
for a moment, i thought i believed her.

"you're so fucking perfect,"
she had said to me in every conceivable way.
gushing. yelling. crying.
growling in my ear as her desperate hands
dug into the depths of my hair.
whispering into my neck as she embraced me.
i'm not.
she knows about that fact and that i
am too self-aware to not know this fact
for myself.
i know this because now,
she looks at me in the same way
with her same glassy, unfaltering eyes
and touches me in the same way
with her same cold, loving hands-
"i fucking love you," she says.

i believe her.
she does not love me for being perfect.
she does not think of me as perfect at all, really.
and how could i not believe her
when she paints ridges of a scar
on my left cheek,
cracks in my pale peach lips,
vermillion tints of the whites of my tired eyes?