i said goodbye to my lost loves.

it was like pulling a thorn from my side, the meaning from

my persecution complex, a masochistic need to

repeatedly wound myself even though i know full well that i can bleed.

& now i find myself confronted with the reality of you.

they said i would sin, & they said i would pay for my sins.

i am not sure which i am currently doing.


(if & when i remove you from the secret part of me

i might die. or not die, but cease to be the

I i was the only time that i liked me.)

from the moment of conception my life was a regression:

i forgot not to talk, not to think, not to stand on my two feet

just wishing for the chance to rest


someday we’ll have children and it will be our turn to

overcompensate for our own stupid mistakes.

someday i will fall out of love with you, & democracies

will fall out of favour, & the earth will fall into darkness.

someday we will look back on uncertainty with fondness

& wonder if our half-dead gods were really so good

by being honest.


i am condemned to you. i could have endured anything else;

the flames, the chains, the cold. i could have lived a million years

without growing old, wasting away inside,

watching as everything dies.

but i can no longer endure the intense scrutiny of your uncaring eyes


yet this is the pain i have searched for;

& in this broken world we are all martyrs for some unforgivable &

irrational cause. if not you, then the next wave of topless brainless

beauties fighting against their own misunderstanding; if not you, then

unrepentant apologists, looking desperately for identity in other

people’s losses. so i choose you because you are the least of most evils

& i would rather be destroyed by you than any other misguided fire.

if there is method in my madness then i will love you madly
if you are my cross to bear then i will bear you gladly