You are my personal savior.

I rid myself of anything personal
and pin all of my pain,
physical, or otherwise, upon you
and you wear it like some
life-size humanoid voodoo doll.

I nail your dirty hands
to my faded green,
wall-paper-peeling
bedroom wall
and throw darts
dipped in
negative emotion
at your grotesquely large head.

You won’t tell a soul
what goes on between us.
You know better.

You can never say
that I treat you badly.

I only beat you
when I feel as though
you may turn on me
and reveal my
innermost secrets to
some stranger
who passes by the
open window,
or worse,
to someone who
knows me well and
may use it against me.

Hell, I even made
you a crown of
the sharpest barbwire
I could find.

Still, you will not squirm.
You will not cry.

You will not scream,
let alone make
minuscule, nearly inaudible
guttural sounds that
could somehow be mistaken
for words of complaint.

You know better.

Who else has
a savior
that is trained so well?