a rhetorical question at best

I see a monster now, hidden right behind my eyes.

I am no stranger to the reflection in the mirror.

I know what I am looking at.

And I fear it.

...

I still keep the poems you wrote to me.

And the notes you sent.

Not all of them, but the very best of them.

I keep those words you wrote to me to remind myself you were not always cruel.

Sometimes, you were just you.

You were you until you were not.

And grieving someone who is still very much alive but terribly, terrifyingly changed is the worst form of torment you could have ever put me through.

...

I could love what you were, but I'll be damned...

For I could not love you for what you have become.

...

In the process of becoming

who you became,

you took away yourself from me

by becoming someone else,

someone unrecognisable to my soul and my eyes,

someone and something cruel and vile.

I could have loved all your monsters but I could not love the one you have become.

Doesn't that make me a monster as well?

The one I see in the mirror?

...

I. L.

@Iviwrites