priceless pages painted in pink & gold fade and fall, every one a tiny reflection of bittersweet candy wrapped memories. paralyzed perfectly in place, my reflection at five years old mirrored in delicate white glass, endlessly dreaming of one day flying away free. shattered pieces brushed with warm sunlight capture my life in countless shades of the darkest poisons twisted intricately with the purest remedy. light & dark, love & hate, loss & acceptance, every color carrying a unique complex duality. looking through the past, I silently wonder how beautiful beginnings could end in such heartbreaking tragedies. my hands softly trace the elegantly curved bars, a secret cage designed to stand timelessly. since the beginning you were the villain in all my childhood stories, the one on the highest throne, powerfully holding the lock & key. ruling a grand golden palace in the clouds, my innocence & love sold so carelessly. you stole a rare butterfly to display her wings for your own private collection within a fabricated family. trophies & trinkets arranged high upon a shelf to continually keep. breadcrumbs of love replaced by shallow affections & counterfeit intimacy. discovering your personal plans to modify my heart & mind into exactly who you wanted me to forever be. a subtle undercurrent of fear from your precisely placed rage & executed violence, underneath a prisoner of your pain & fragile insecurities. her life lost to cold waters in an unfeeling, unchanging sea, your promises and letters sealed & signed faithlessly. a million miles from the place where my entire world fell apart & you escaped without a mark from the calamity & rainfall of debris. you planted a seed of scarcity within a lethal dose of codependency drenched in guilt trip expectancies. for so long I just wanted to be loved without hidden agendas, gaslighting games, debt collection & fees, relentlessly playing the untold roles of your most loyal devotee. eventually with sips of courage & compassion in chosen cherry blossom teas, your power & presence fading, disappearing one day completely. slowing recovering & taking better care of the broken parts within me. forgiveness in time, peace found in goodbyes, still abandonment wounds & invisible scars align with certain vulnerabilities. realizing for the first time it’s not selfish to put my own heart first & recognize my separate needs. I wanted to blame you for every second of the rest of my life, red letters of revenge to obsessively write & read. remind my mind again the many stages of grief, when fueling anger is easier than waking up from fallen dreams, reality making it difficult to breathe. the path of revenge slowly poisoning my heart with a deeper darkness, setting fire to my own self dying deeds. holding hate for you gave me the freedom to live blissfully in the arms of denial & hardened hostility. the cruelty carefully conditioning me to be a person I never planned to ever be. the thin lines between victim & villain, justice & punishment can blur effortlessly. repeating old familiar patterns & losing myself in your shadowed projections & empty identities was not my destiny. beneath the perfection & pride, you showed me love could be nothing more than exchanged currency. you desired a crown & a porcelain doll to capitalize & control, never once seeing a real part of me. no matter how I let you go, the choices I made to cope with the past deeply hurt more than me. regret & remorse flow naturally from a place of quiet & humbled accountability. running away from my choices & consequences afterwards built a self made prison with the walls of my mistakes written too clearly to not see. accepting and loving the rejected parts of myself & forgiving you completely to finally break free. heroes held on heavenly pedestals will all eventually fall & bleed, becoming equally ensnared by their own kind of inescapable webs & bound by the deceptive devices of greed. the last line of your story ends with only you, your reign & abuses ending forever too, I promise your story was never the one for me. the only way to have love was to let go of the false fantasy of you finally loving me. my own wings gave me the strength to fly free to a safe & loving home, where the last of my tears turned into the sweetest honey.