Stop sign

The chaos of my mind dulls to your eyes. Part of what is raging within me purrs and coos in your embrace. I am a dulled firework, reaching the end of a glorious performance. My ignition a distant memory, lost in the translation of your gaze. For what was this life before you as my medication? You are the glistening heroin my fiendish cravings fetishized. Even when your touch felt repulsive, and your words cliche, I still basked in the warmth of such long awaited belonging. I tried to reciprocate - to be the baritone echo that the glory of your faithful ballad deserved - but there has been no practice by my kind for these moments. This established scene is but an improvised awkward sketch, the two actors being I and contentment. We are strangers to each other. Its grip is alien. I've studied how to respond, but in practice being human is a lot harder than one would think. Your eyes help. Your hollow smile. Your gushing lies. They encourage a hush that regulates the storm behind my dead pan mask.

I gave in to your charm unwillingly, kicking and screaming my resolve fought, wept, then fled - the new self assured delusion that your admiration animated from the moldy cells that littered my valves was stronger than any walls i'd built to protect me from affinity. But once you closed your eyes those walls returned. Their guard off duty. This time however they did not stay dormant, they were not there to protect - they were built for attack. My cage of solitude became an implement of war. I was handed a lease to cruelty and torture; my new homes, one for the summer, one for the fall. The murky pools of acceptance I had so naively bathed in began to corrode. My mouth filled with the black sludge of dependence, it coated my lungs and every breath became a battle. Allowing myself to drown was not martyrdom; no matter how much I wished it was. I simply forgot how to swim. No voice to lead me, no optics to rescue me, no hope in hell. I was alone. Abandoned easily, without sharp eyes to guide my morality it ceased to exist.

However on the surface I was happy. Ecstatic at the slightest whiff of longing from your direction. You were never to know how unhinged I had become, or suggestively how deranged I always was. The screams in my head that punctuated your innocent snuffling were only audible to me. My smile imprisoned the wailing. Nicotine-stained teeth were the bars that contained my torment. Kept like a convict by the near art of fitting in. Your torture was ward to an inaccurate painting of me, a wax scuffed less-than-idyllic replica. But further beyond that I was the captive of gloom. The loud infinite admission that under my skull was nothing but ill feeling and calculated revenge dangled before me the keys to my freedom The morose orchestra of clinking metals sang furiously through my mind. It incubated true fear. There was always fear.

You stiffen when I embrace you. A scowl curves your brow. Perhaps you're dreaming of combat, to you the cautious touch of my nervous hand is a balled fist launching across your subconscious, not a lost frightened girl seeking validation. Or perhaps I am a pitied enemy in your mirage, my claws pleading and desperate. Ironically the accuracy reaches beyond your fabricated scenery. My desolation is obnoxious. It roars across my face. But perhaps even you are unaware of my pathetic hunger. Perhaps to you this hour is reserved for sleep and I am but an intruder demanding attention in a time you allocate to blank dry rest. You know nothing of the way my brain is crawling with fury, the intrusive thoughts and the endless loathing. You are adrift on a cloud of ignorance, and no matter how hard I throw my spears you remain imperceptible. When will I give up anticipation? When, if ever, will your bubble pop?

There was a time when my monsoon was mine alone. I kept it in check with a cemented routine of solitude and abrasion. Me and my illness grew fond of each other throughout those intimate meetings. I learned to cherish it for what it was; irreversible and fascinating. We mastered a trust in each other, forged a respect for each other, we even began to need each other. But then you crashed into our visceral entanglement and you dislodged all i'd spent years building with one soft accidental huff. My capacity to love is limited at best, so in order to let you in I had to banish the security of my demons. Of course they were furious, and now when they return their horns are sharp and their intentions sordid.

I suppose what I am praying to discover is whether the hours of clarity and bliss make up for the subsequent bedlam. But of course this query doesn't plague me long. Because as the sun rises so do your lids they flutter open and let their innards consume- and once again I lose my rationality in your irises. My trepidation leaks from the ducts atop your lashes and I resent my doubt. How can something so beautiful possibly be toxic? Is this desire for pain and unease pathological? Will it ever release me? Must I release it? Your sleep cycle is my traffic light, a red, green, amber fog. You dare me to rush with you, teasing as my mangled engine revs. Will victory earn your devotion? Does the steering wheel spin a reciprocated tale? Could this quest cleanse my desecrated guilt? Yet alas delicate, powerful creature, retaining no regard to logic or lust; I am simply too drunk to drive.