She Called it "Rage"

She called it her "Rage" Issues

She called it that when we first met.
She told me that I was special, handsome, gentle, kind.
She told me that even though I was damaged, dented, hurt and scared that she was too.

She stole my heart in 2 weeks.
24 hours a day 48 hours a night.
She stole my heart in 2 ways
She soothed the girl who lived in my medicated canyon of a heart,
she distracted me and kissed me like it was going out of style.

She took me on adventures,
She sent me pictures of her smiling, with demon eyes.
She refused to go on social media, it made me feel like her whole damn world.

She’d lost her father, experienced grief and it resonated with me in a way that I’d never felt. Here was someone hurt as much as I was hurting.

I slept with her and her sometimes unstable dog,
we held hands and I crushed her hips and pulled the pity from her perfect mouth.
She was way too damn pretty,
She was light and beautiful, a dancer and a poet.

She called it rage issues.
When one night she shut down, went silent.
Like a robot with the cord severed.
She went limp and dark and her eyes took vacations.

When the power came back on she was fury
She was every fear I’d ever had
She hated me, my touch, my look, my eyes
She hated life and books and truth and lies.

She screamed at me and told me I was hateful
She stormed away into the night like a train that’s never even heard of tracks.
Hours of cold walking, begging, hoping, crying,
I apologized 300 times for whatever I had done.

Some part of her broke off and while I chased her that night it floated away pulling a thread of safety and security we’d been weaving just that morning.

In tears and rage and shaking angst,
I took her to a safer place.
I slept sitting up with adrenaline just rotting in my veins.
My neck was sideways on a faded dirty couch

Staring at what my life had become overnight.

She called it “Rage Issues”
To this day I’m not sure what it meant.
She loved me like a storm and hated me like a hurricane.
When it passed it was like I’d had a knife to my throat.

I could only look sideways and she knew it.
In 6 hours she drove a spike in our future and put a straight jacket on my love.
After that ink just faded from the pages.
Nothing worked, the gears were missing teeth.
We stumbled along like marionettes with the strings all sticky

When I left, I said I’m sorry, though part of me was pissed.
When I left I shut down, powered off like an old TV
Dwindling to a speck and I felt guilty
So fucking guilty at how relieved I was, at how much easier breath could come from my lungs.

I don’t know what you’d call it, but she was everything I needed and everything I feared. It was 3 abusive girlfriends in one night and it was 2 Juliet’s worth of suicidal passion in 2 weeks.

She was everything, good and bad, in record time.

I guess that’s what the issue is.

Love issues, I call them.

‍