Portrait of My Friendship With a Narcissist

That first week of college, I invited you
into my dorm room. The walls were bare
and woundless. You told me the tale of the girl
who held your hair back as you threw up memories
in your bathroom. How she helped you scrub the chunks
of ache splattering across the white tile.
We went to CVS the next week, and you stole chapstick
in your favorite scent: juicy watermelon.
It’s not that I can’t afford it, you told me. It’s just that the world
owes me. That was the moment I knew you
would steal parts of me next. You turned me against the rest
of the world, fed me fables about how your
neighbors who lived across the hall were out to get you.
You told me that I wasn’t like the rest of them.
You called me loyal, but what you really meant was afraid.
When no one was looking, you scooped out
my past from my body like seeds from your favorite fruit.
You held my hurt in your palms and called
yourself my saviour. At midnight, I helped you line the walls
of my bedroom with photographs of my wounds.
I didn’t know they were wounds, then. I only thought they
were photographs of you and me.

Annalisa Hansford’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in The West Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. They are probably listening to Gracie Abrams.