The Attic

By Arianna Kyriacou

you always expected me to immediately get on my knees for you

you are not something to be worshipped you are not a god

i am not below you yet i know you are not capable of loving me without making me feel

so small so

i tuck the way i feel about you into tattered cardboard boxes that sit thick with dust above the bed we spend far too much time on

it rests dead, enclosed around brown walls and it’s damp and leaking onto the floor through the muddy print you left from your size twelve shoe

sometimes it drips onto my torso while you are bruising my jaw and strangling my neck for fun