like you, my heart rots

How much can one give before they crumble under the weight of what could have been and never will be? How many times can one tear themselves into tiny, bloody pieces, rip out their soul, mutilate themselves until nothing remains but a hopeless shell of a person? And when one wants to claw out their own eyes because of that burning itch under their skin and tear out their own fingernails because they can’t seem to clean the dirt out, how long before their restraints snap? How long before they fall apart? You took my sanity, my freedom, my life. I thought I was done but you just kept taking I used to want to kill you in the most brutal way I could. I would turn you inside out, or feed you to the very snakes you so adore. But I learned to love you, and you turned my hatred into worship I gave you everything I had to give and you tore it to shreds. I was a guard dog fed on the scraps of your sick dreams, who would kill for any morsel of rotting food just to survive You made me care even though I knew you never would. All I ever wanted was to survive You were undefeatable, unkillable-my best chance at life. Instead you left me lifeless I wasn’t a person, I was a tool that you used until broken and beyond repair. I’m a scrap of metal, a disfigured wrench, sitting stagnant in a dusty drawer. I’m a broken quill screaming ‘Use me!’ to no ears, for I have no mouth, no teeth, and no tongue. You made sure I would be nothing without you; like a dog, I would die without your scraps. My love, this dependency you created, it destroyed me. You were defeated, and I died in all ways but body. You kept me locked in your little chest of stolen things, that you kept hidden in your rotting heart. Long ago did you take me, long ago did I stop trying to escape. I became the husk that I am now the moment I began loving you. Nothing changed when you died but the possibility of ever finding the key to let myself out. I fear you’ve swallowed it. There's little left in me, I'm a living corpse, I smell of rot and stolen dreams. What makes a human? Life, morality, emotion, or regret? My love, I’m afraid you’ve made a monster.