You Stole My Creativity

(Writing this helped me get it back)

Don’t Worry, I Got It Back / photo of and by author in all her creative energy slowly given back year after year, as she healed. (2021)

Just like you did to every girl before me, and after me.

I think about how your photography has clout

That your revered for your art

Because you suffocated me from mine.

23,000 followers?

How many of them know what you did to me?

I heard a pop in my chest

Bruise left

I never wrote while we were together

All energy life force stolen from me

Now I know it wasn’t love

Because if it had

I’d have been able to create something. Anything.

I think about the living art you’ve made

I hate that you have a fiancée. A son. A whole life.

And how you robbed me from mine

15 months

Thanking Father Time for not giving you more of me.

But wishing he’d give me those hours I’d lock myself in the bathroom to hide from you back.

I think about all the art you’ve stolen from other women

I hate that I know a few of them