Arsonist's Lullabye

7th

his betrayal left her heartstrings awry
dangling like shreds of fading intimacy
caged inside structures of pain and anguish;

every night she would let him paint pictures on her skin,
to remind her that she was his and vice versa;
the black and blue reminded her of nights with him;

her rose-thorned walls outgrew the weeds
and molded into an indestructible fortress
in which the red seeps through the cracks sometimes
but only when she loves

for she had a bleeding heart