I will never be strong enough to hate you and your barbed wire arms swathed around my body. You sink splintered shards of sorrow into my asthenic flesh. It would take a love you’ve never had to will the sorry I’ve starved for past your chapped sangria lips. You won’t let me forgive you.

I remember our first spring when stars floated around my eyes like lilies as you took my face between your hands and taught me that love was something to borrow. Love was slipping off shirts when you’d ask. Love was staying when you grabbed and threw me against the bathroom door. I’m a bullet casing without a gun to fire back.

Your lies like mosquito stings I force myself to forget, tucking that shred of truth in the limbo of space that I wish I could keep between you and I. As we waltz in and out of the lie of forever, I wonder if I have ever been my own.

Jia J. Johnson is a high school senior enrolled in the creative writing program at Barbara Ingram. She hasn’t stopped writing since she could speak, enlisting her mother to write down her stories for her. Her favorite genre is poetry, though she enjoys them all. She is the president of her school’s newspaper, and has been awarded several Scholastic silver keys at both the regional and national levels. Jia credits her parents for supporting and encouraging her writing, her friends for inspiration and peer review, and especially her teachers for assisting in the creation of pieces she is proud of.