Call It What It Is

we’ll call you hades, and call me persephone, but you won’t call me. we’ll call you the torturer, call me the victim. and then we’ll call this love. we’ll call this love while you force feed me pomegranates, while you drag me down with you, while you never let me leave. we’ll call this love while i fight you, while i kick and scream and try to hurt you. we’ll call this love because that’s what we were taught to do. we’ll call this love because we’ve seen it before, in stories and movies, in ourselves whenever we look in the mirror. so we’ll call this love and ignore the screams, ignore the fighting, ignore the war. and never call it what it is.