By Arianna Kyriacou
you always
expected me
to immediately get
on my knees for you
you are not
something
to be worshipped
you are not a god
i am not below you
yet i know
you are not capable of loving me
without making me feel
so small
so
i tuck the way i feel about you
into tattered cardboard boxes
that sit thick with dust
above the bed
we spend far too much time on
it lies dead, enclosed around brown walls
and it’s damp & leaking onto
the floor, through the muddy print you left
from your size twelve shoe
sometimes it drips
onto my torso while you are
bruising my jaw and
strangling my neck for fun