Ticks and Tar

I hope you hate me. I hope when you look through my pictures and through his, it tears you apart, rips you to shreds. I hope that you have nightmares about me stealing kisses from his lips. I hope my name is engraved into the back of your head in the worst kind of way, because when you hear it I hope your stomach twists and the putrid taste of bile rises in your throat.

I hope you feel this way because it's the way I feel about you.

I know I shouldn't, I know I should just let it go, this rancid jealousy that has found it's way into the darkest pits of my heart. But the only thing that gets me through it is the thought that I taint you the way you poison me.

You keep me awake at night, ever present in my dreams, lurking in my nightmares. I feel you while we kiss, and when his hands run down my spine. I wonder how many times he tangled your wet hair in the shower, and if he called you 'love' or 'baby', I wonder if he gave you the same tilt of his lips when he said your name, I wonder how many times he moaned it. I wonder how many times he still does in his dreams.

I hate you because I am afraid of you. I hate you because you will never go away, a beautiful tragic picture of his past that he will always want to re-do or correct. I hate you because you make me feel insufficient, stale, and dull.

I never took him from you, but you're taking him from me. You are clung onto him like a demon on his back, like a tick in the nape of his neck.

I hate you because I am sure he thinks about you as much as I do.

I hate you not because of the stranger you are to me, but because of the memory you are to him. The memory that he is drunkenly still in love with and that I am agonizingly aware.

I hate you because you will never love him as much as I do. Because you will never be as good for him as I am, but he will always want to come running back.