Back On My Shelf
But first, pull the string and I'll tell you that he runs because he loves me.
The moment of realization is brutal. It’s all fun and games until you learn that you’re the toy. I’d always been the one rolling the dice. I guess I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to.
I sat on the shelf yet collected no dust. I waited without stopping. Time and time again, I readjusted my life to the schedule of someone else. Sleep when they do. Awake when they do. Talk when asked to. Respond when questioned.
I learned to only use my phone one way. I answer. I don’t press buttons or icons without first being told to. I’m a good girl. It’s the world that is savage. I am precious. I am breakable. I am fragile.
Like a ticking bomb, I am fragile.
Like a shard of glass, I am breakable.
Like a porcelain doll, I am precious.
Set me off, then blame me for the detonation, and I will believe you.
You can’t break me. It’s been done. It is done. It’s not that I am indestructible, it’s that I am destroyed. But still, you can try. And I will let you.
I am seen, not heard. Looked at and enjoyed, but not important. I am decor. I am a toy. And you can play when you want to. Shelve me when you don’t. And I will wait.
I don’t notice it. I never notice it. They say they’re different. They’re always different. Different from what or whom? I don’t think they even know anymore.
Better than the last but worse than the next, is that the goal? Is there a goal? Or are we winging it?
I am not to be told details as I am not for the purpose of discussion. I am dark, fun, and fuckable.
And then I am not thought about until your pants sit stiffly and uncomfortably again.
Fill my ears with your disturbing lies or untold truths that not even you believe, just to see if I will play your game. Of course I will, you knew I would, it’s why you came back. I never expected it, and you like that I still want you enough to not value the conversation quality. Speak to me of venom when your tongue is capable of curing the war against words. Set me against your violence and let me breathe only when you tell me to.
I will call you my deity. I will call you whatever you want. You will call me… no. You won’t. Those days are gone. Even the music stopped. The simple things that made us what we were weren’t born in the darkness; they helped us to house it. But you don’t care for those things now. It’s not why you came back.
It’s a game. I’m a toy. It’s all for fun and I’ve played along.
Or did you think I was not aware?
A lie for a lie, a truth for a truth? We can play truth or dare. I dare you to feel something real and speak it. I dare you to write more than what your audience demands. I dare you to be yourself. But only… only… if you dare to be true.
My tortured heart has missed you from the depths of the wreckage you left in your wake. You knew that. I am the pedestal from which you feel confident in all things. But why would we discuss anything? Such reality is not given to frivolous things like me.
I am a thing.
You used to hate that people treated me that way. And then you did it too because you already knew that I’d allow it.
And I allowed it because you were you and you were back, and the shelf I was on at the time was stale, and I wanted to play again. Just say when.
Then leave me to my brokenness. And tell me how much better off I am.
Except that’s not how you play truth or dare.