Hunter by Adriana Parker

My soulmate was a Hunter

A tall talent with caramel skin

He was qualified to be my lover

Even more to be my leader in a business I had not yet known

I had gems locked inside my fortress in a trove

Split open, I bared my uncut rubies and diamonds to him

I had opals that glimmered against the sun and sapphires that twinkled in moonlight

I am sure a wise man has once said

"Do not bear your soul to someone unworthy, for you will feel the deepest hurt you will ever own"

So unworthy he was of my body and soul

And whilst love sometimes whispers "uncomfortable" and "go slow" I sped through the skies like an eagle

Wings, I mean legs, spread because I am no bird

Dealt broken promises that felt like a blade against my throat

I had no voice

Slipping through his fingers at the exact same time he slipped through mine

It was simultaneous disengagement

I put all my eggs in his basket while he ran with all my treasure

All my stuff

I was left with nothingness

Left with an empty trove and hunted down like predators do its prey

Fed a list of sweet anythings to get me to stay

The countless I love you's

So many times he'd say "you are my happiness" and "you are mine"

I ate those words and they would swell in my belly like rice

There was no way I could have prepared myself for the revelation of his disguise

No way I could know this guy would be the cause of a numbing pain

Or the teller of an endless lie

Lied to me so softly those words rolled off his tongue without a fight in sight

Without a blazing gun but rather another woman that would come to be my replacement

In a second, I was pushed aside far after I had fell into his entrapping enchantment

Left me staring at mirror I wondered why I was not good enough for him

Was not enough for him

Why he'd seek a harem of women for validation and pray to a god I did not know for coexistence

Perhaps I was too strong, too bright or too beautiful

A tad bit too intimidating for his tastes over time but I would have given him everything I owned

Skin from my back...bone and vodka tainted blood

He could not help who else he loved

If you could even call it love...

He was a Hunter who had the power to make months feel like an eternity

A Hunter who went being my world to a distant memory so easier

I spent nights wide awake

Days drowning in my tears

Constructing an elaborate suicide to explain why I was not enough for him

To compensate for the lie we were living

I... wrote him a letter of my love past the Milky Way and watched as he fell into another lover's arms

His other lover's arms

Laid his head next to hers in bed while I tossed in mine alone

They never tell you lonely could feel like the calm before a storm or razor blades in your veins

They never tell you your whole world... solar system... Galaxy... Universe... can turn into a dot on a map 

as you give your last breathe

But my soulmate was a Hunter

Hunted me from mountains to seas

So call this a love poem for a love lost

A lover lost in the midst of his Iliad who was never mine to hold

Let ME go.

Let me go.