If you are like me—
then you have seen blood.

Not metaphor.
Not symbol.
Just blood.

Without cause.
Without reason.
Just red. Just there.

If you are like me
you’ve seen hate.

Not the kind they teach in textbooks—
but the kind that smiles
through a courtroom lie.

The kind that hides behind injustice,
like a priest behind a curtain.

A petty victim of personal treason—
all sharp edges, no remorse.

You don’t speak of it.
You wear it.

In the back of your throat.
In your knuckles when you laugh too hard.
In the way your fingers twitch
when the room gets too quiet—
when the monkeys
jump and shout
in your ******* brain.

If you are like me,
you stopped believing in second chances
the day you saw it sold—

dressed up like the mother you never had.
Perfume, pearls, and a permanent vacancy
where love was supposed to live.

I remember
the look in her face
when I saw what the razor had done.

I remember
what they said—
“Can we look inside your house?”

I remember
the silence after.

And the fragments of the bullet.

How your lies
filled the room
like water fills lungs—
and I’m still
grasping for air.

No one ever apologized.
No one ever saw me.

They saw a story
they could sleep through.

And worst of all—
you never once
thanked me.

This is not a poem.
This is not a metaphor.

This is
my ******* blood
on the floor.

And still—

I opened the door.

The one
whose contents
lay behind the smoke
of mirrors
and a house
of cards