Cortisol and tears please rinse away

The dopamine of toxic love.

Sharp pain, kill this dull torment.

A narcissist’s fiction.

Inflict one last wound,

That might bring peace,

Before void,

Hollows

Me.

An empath learns to love themself from a narcissist who doesn’t. I wrote this poem as a nonet wherein the first line is nonasyllabic with each subsequent line losing a syllable until ending in a monosyllabic word. I thought this style of poetry might allude to the whittling away of false hope to reveal the most important relationship we should have in life, and that is with ourselves first.