(Im)pure

He watched the moon set over the grey blocks of architecture. The mist he was so fond of was hovering around their edges, merging the sharp corners into blurs of sky. He never remembered the setting of the moon. The glorious erection of sun too chauvinistic in its performance that the man forgot the tired old moon as it shrank away to breathe over another soul's night. Today he couldn't face the sun. He was afraid the light of the day would burn him and cause him to accept their night was over - that a new day was forming like a rampant virus and would soon engross him in its honesty. The man had felt himself redefined that night. The hours of moaning panting poetry between the sheets and kissing across the skin had sparked chaos in his chest; a wrathful warmth of longing. He was enslaved by the impossibility of what he knew to be the most honest desire he'd ever possessed and under the ghostly smile of the moon he was allowed that brief happiness; that momentary connection with contentment. It's irregularity and beauty a foreign confusion to his unfulfilled voracity.

The man's eyes drifted through the cool dawn mist and a personal haze formed between his lids. The inevitable danger of his tryst was rising with the wretched majesty and ego of his galaxy's relentless star. It threatened to dissolve his immunity and leave his pure devotion tainted. He felt the skin of his bare chest as he faced out the large window - he traced the sky line as he traced his love's inflictions of lust; softly scratched into his powerful frame. The clawing hands of a cum drenched entanglement, pleasure, hunger and fear all singing a melancholy choir across his figure. He smiled through the prick of tears and lost himself in the memory of gasping lips and warm tears of a finally found release. The edges of his happiness were moulding though. The fungus was stronger than the antiseptic thoughts he was forcing against it. He could not hide from the anxiety of rejection, the fading euphoria of a dream finally made real. The desperation to know the body of his true soul mate again - to lay lips across lips and hands between thighs was raging like a tsunami through his mind and his blood. The man's incandescent eyes could not stop from darting to the bedroom door to again drink in the fragile nudity of the flesh he had so long fantasized about.

The blue of the sky was loud now - the day had arrived. The man cursed the moon for leaving him there under this crumbling mirage. Before the day had it's opportunity to expose him entirely the man craved one last look - one last solid gold gem of adoring pride. But as he pushed the door open softly to the place he'd left his flame to rest on the cinders of their burnt out passion; he saw his son's youth-stripped eyes were already widened. In them a stagnating blank lost horror. The truth of the day didn't matter to the boy, the night was just as fluorescent on his torment. Its soundtrack a begging pain-gasped opera. The sodden sheet could never again protect his innocence - shield this new nudity. The man sighed with heavy grief. He knew he didn't deserve happiness when it came at such a cost. Yet both shredded souls knew now he would never stop stealing it. With that screaming, thrashing truth he knew he could never again depend on the veil of a naive moon.

Thunder

The light was assaulting. A blinding scream of electricity, launching into my skull. I tried to hide from it but the protection of my wafer lids was minimal, and the memory of it burnt enough to scathe. Was this heaven? I was struggling to remember a time before this moment, before this light. I knew this light, and only this light. This light was my spouse, my sibling, my self. But this light was unforgiving. It was naked and painfully true. It was the light of sobriety. I remembered something before this heaven. I knew it was not only this paradise I knew. A darkness crept into it - bleeding through my beautiful phosphorescent memory. An envious coal crimson of desire and destruction - it was tantalizing and horrifying. It smiled with blood stained lips and breathed an orgasmic perfume, my knees trembled at the memory of it. Knees. A body. I was more than the eyes that burnt and withered in this light. I tried to find my knees with the apotheosis of my apparent being - scanned the light for my body. I saw toes. I saw knees. I saw calf, thigh, cunt, stomach, breasts; me.

The light began to dull as I was permitted to feel my mind. Or rather it felt me, felt every nerve in my godforsaken justforgotten body. It shrieked at the abused limbs, howled across the corroded organs; whimpered in agony deep in my arteries cores. I ruined this body. Fed it the wrong fuel relentlessly and threw it across concrete and dance floors. It hated me passionately, a hatred reciprocated by my loathing of it. It didn't take my body long after awoken to feel the body next to it. My skin tingled in fear and disgust, prickled like a cat towards an enemy. As if anti-magnetized it began to creep away, towards the unfamiliar floor and away from the stranger's bed. My body stabbed against my mind, my skull trying to rid itself of the pulsing nemesis inside it. My hurried hands grasps at the clothes that hid my body's revulsion from the eyes of others, and from the sensibility of myself. There was bottles of liquor scattered all over, profoundly as empty as my heart felt. The place was somewhere I'd never seen; but the scenario was a frequent intruder. Slipping into shoes and slipping out the door I felt that darkness again. It was starving, the black; worn and desperate. It ate at me as I scanned the empty early morning street that met me after I closed the door on the intrusive truth of addiction. I blinked into the grey melancholy sky, repressing the tears of my realization. With a shudder I smiled into a practised mask of denial. The tears that dared battle through were rightfully executed by drops from the sad, lonely sky. The clouds were weeping for me. It was only a light drizzle, but I felt like I was going to drown.

thing

From the first euphony uttered from your lips I was hooked. Flayed by your words I lay bare. My skin felt the crunch of your teeth as you pronounced your 'T's, chowing down on my vulnerability as if it were a quick snack between urgent appointments. Through the weeks that followed I grew septic. My exposed flesh gave home to disease and I welcomed it feebly, too afraid to fight it in fear that you'd see - see the side of me that deserved to be your equal. As long as I hid in your naivety I was safe, the maggots could nibble me away and I'd go quietly. Letting your existence consume me. Not like in the way I longed to destroy myself with your love. I'd explode in your arms like a firework. Awkwardly lit and fired at the wrong angle during a november 5th family celebration. I'd ignite all the wrong places and leave the witnesses screaming as I seared their flesh with my passion. I wanted to be a flurried disaster against you. To leave no survivors; have blood drenching us as we manically laughed amongst the wreckage. We'd use the limbs of our victims as pillows to lull us into a protected post-coital dream. 

But instead I stagnated. Alone. There only to boost your ego. I fumbled and fell, like a fawn on ice. The mighty wolf I was became dormant in your presence, she cowered in front of your brilliance; transmutated from predator to prey - as if faced with a nova whilst standing atop a dying star. My confidence faded into submission as I began to worship you. I was a gold star awarded to a finger painting. You were a masterpiece of the entire galaxy. I longed to journey to the centre of you, to be annihilated by the heat of your divine superiority. Instead I kept to the shadows. Offering support and suggestions when I could. Suppressing the screaming truth for so long that it took a form too repulsive to imagine. And then it met the maggots writhing within me, and together they dined on the last shreds of my identity; my remaining morsels of self respect. With their teamwork I was reduced to a husk. A shell. A shit smear on your horizon. My piteous state a curse I was delighted to be blessed with. As from my state of sub-existence I was free, to placidly watch the exquisite storm that was you rage. 

Vile

For you 'woman' should be redefined. I don't like you belonging in my gender. There is no finesse to you, no art - not a hint of femininity extends beyond the throbbing pulse in your vulva. Of course to the uneducated eye the way you hold yourself, the extent of your breast as you breathe your heavy sighs, the curl to your bass note hips, the seemingly endless advance of your limbs; to those eyes, and perhaps the organs that proceed them - you are the embodiment of 'woman'. However, I know women to be more than that. You are a mere harpy, an imitation of the beauty of humans. You walk with the same prowess, cat like in your stalk, but erect - a true marsupial stride. How long did it take you dear demon, to perfect that humane puppetry?

In all honesty I am but awed, for if my impersonation were nearly as flawless as yours; I'd never have to check my blood was red. I thought the claws you placed in him were vindictive. I long cursed my talons for being all too blunt, unable to keep my love, longing for the squirming desperation of him as a worm on my hook. 'Only fair' I rationed, as I was the disembowelled maggot on his. It was however not entirely your fault. He fled from me for I was a glacier. Yes my heart was feverish, a thousand erupting volcanoes trapped in the centre of a beating sun. But no one knew of the solar planets coursing within me. Ice queen extraordinaire as I was. An expression like marble, with a side order of contempt. Only I knew of the ways in which he shook my planets, the way in which without his magnetism my galaxy would cease to expand.

I softened his skin. It became desperate for affection. So when you placed your claws against it, and thrashed with a lonely desperation; he accepted them with a dire gravity - parting like watery complacent batter in a chipped mixing bowl. But you see sweet doe eyed Satan, you should never have touched what was not yours to touch. For no matter the list of my sins - which i am sure you recite together with a giggle, like bed times stories of the damned - yours were greater. With your claws you caught him, and with your kiss you stole him. The polars to my gravity. The oscillation of my being. If you had turned your wings another direction, your sharp eyes on another man, maybe I could have let myself love him and thawed the ice from around these scars.

I try not to see myself in you. It makes it easier not to compete, to lock you in a box next to all the others - sandwiched somewhere between my father and my god - labels branding you all with an obtuse; 'DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE. MAY CAUSE RAGE'. I don't miss the taste of my fingers down my throat as I tried to become you, nor do I miss the jealous miasma that breathed from my pores at the mention of your name. Unhappiness is a sickness that loves to infect, thanks to yours mine became a pandemic. When I think of you relishing the vapid thrill of your betrayal I smirk at the idea of it wearing thin, thinner than I wore as I stretched to survive it.

The humour is I never wished you dead my nectarous imp, the way I wished myself. Nor I never wished you disappear oh treasured fiend, the way I began to. I never cursed you, rued you, despised you. You delicious incubus, I more craved you. Your mythological maliciousness saved me. I needed you to curdle; to act less than I believed was woman, be less than I believed was human. You took from me. You broke me. You killed me. And in that, Saint Harpy, you reminded me I was alive.

Always/Never

You're a distraught comedy. The way you perceive yourself. An entitlement birthed from an empire of nothing, a self deprecation handed to you on a golden platter. I was the worm on the end of your hook. Writhing and caught. Why did I not come loose? No one tried to free me, they watched me wriggle - blood oozing from my naive wounds, my guts spilling across my far from innocent anatomy. In my mind I was angelically blessed, the light of you forming a moulding halo above my exoskeleton. For what was the pain of feeling in due of the power of possibility? The days merged by, every empty second became a longing, and in that longing I found you; a purpose. The lost moments that previously had been unnoticed were suddenly on fire with desire. These were the moments of silence, the moments that belonged to no one but boredom became yours, counting towards you. I never asked myself if you were worthy, too consumed by necessity.

Since the fall of our entanglement i've been reflective. I think maybe now that my always was your 'for now'. The days I planned for us were days you kept empty because you knew that you never meant any of the tentative bullshit I swallowed with a shy gulp. Your smile to me was a beacon of security, to you it was just an involuntary reaction to the amusement you found in my gullible confusion. The intoxicated haze we ran through kept me subdued, I believed we were new to the addiction together but you'd been a convert for years, the needle marks barely visible through the tough shell of skin you'd built for yourself after years of pain. I don't blame you for your calluses. To me your existence rings sorrow. For my youthful skin will heal over the stab wounds you planted in it, the fact the knife of my affliction never made a dent in you is far more pitiful. You may think that I am lost without you, and of course your ego will feed that delusion - but the truth is that the part of me I thought you completed was a part of me that I'd been trying to destroy. A codependent shield developed from a fear of deserving connection. How I wish now my ailment hadn't reached you. For in our mornings of mourning, and our honest sunday sighs, I found that hate is a feeling more than love. So as I never felt for you the latter - why is the former so ripe in my chest? Consuming and cold, hate is all I breathe for you now. Hate, and the crippling panic that you won't regret your war cry - your promise of never, your rejection of me.

Lonely

The friends you made in your dreams were gone when you awoke. You hoped they'd left a post-it, or a note scrawled on the back of a rizzla to tell you when they'd next visit. But true to the fickle nature of all humans, those trapped within our subconscious and those we find awake; they simply left. You looked around yourself at the bottles of liquor, their original contents drained - replaced instead with the solid mass of emptiness. This mass was the tumour in you. You feel it between your ribs. Like the shadow to your barely beating heart. You hope one day the mass will become too much. That it will swell and absorb all your organs. Forcing them to become the nothing, become the emptiness that makes you question killing them off yourself. The internal massacre to finalize the war you rage through everyday.

Your limbs are heavy as you dress for the day. You half-heartedly place your legs into jeans. And no-heartedly stare at your skeletal reflection. The day has yet to rise, and the dark of the advance above you feels so perfect. Why can it not swallow you whole? Why must it nibble at you, prolonging your consumption. Is it trying to be helpful, to give you more time? Or is this what it believes you deserve. A desolate hopeless scenery, so you can never escape the matching crushed black of your mind. You can not blame the sky. It did not birth these tumours. They were born with you, and fed off your bad decisions. Gained strength from those who left you, feasted off the loves you lost, the lives you ruined. The tumours are your darkness. They are the loneliness you will never escape. No amount of organ transplants would cleanse you of them. They are in your blood. On your skin. They are you. This is the thought that keeps them with you. They drown you in the fear of losing them, masquerading it as a fear of giving life to more. They manipulate you. Convince you that your trials will heed nothing good - only more of them. You can want all you wish, but you shall never be allowed to love. Because you may think the loneliness is the shadow of your heart. But it is your heart. And it's shadow is all of you. You can never escape.

Shame

We all have secrets. They fester under our skin, atop our veins but below the surface of our membrane. Eternally cankering away, awaiting their moment to be sliced to freedom. For some that moment comes; in honesty. For some that moment is forced upon them, the discovery a scalpel wielded by others that peels back ones flesh and rips apart the sinew - secrets bleed from there willingly, the vessel from which they came reduced to a shivering husk. When he died I started to cry in the shower. It was the only place I felt safe enough to do so. I'd turn the heat of the water so high it seared my eyes, burnt them in my sockets. That was the excuse for my tears. And as quickly as they were born from my eyes they were drowned. Circling the drain like a haunted may pole dance, waving me a solemn goodbye. My nudity made me feel sincere, but the mere fact I hid behind a veil of pain and forged myself a mask of water meant I was never candid. Instead I was a coward. Hiding from my own grief even in the one place I was truly alone. I remember once he told me that he cut himself. He didn't need to tell me because he wore the evidence everywhere I touched him. For him it was a moment of utter trust. In his mirror ball eyes I saw the loneliness he'd always felt fade a little, our true love made him less afraid of the madness he harboured. He looked away from me for a while, the dark sheet that wound itself around his truths was placed across his irises once more. When he spoke next my skin pricked goosebumps. I was so scared of his necessity to me in that moment I had to suppress a scream.

He said the way he felt inside his heart could not be explained by his words. Nor could his eyes ever weep for his anguish. So he took to the blade to make his eyes see his pain. In the hopes that the physicality of it would make his brain recognize the injuries, his ducts would accept its reality and give him the release he so desperately craved. But that pain was secondary. The cuts too shallow. I wish he'd stopped searching beneath his skin. It wasn't just secrets that drained from his body. His life drained away on the end of that blade too. So I saw it respectful of the tears he could never shed for his own life to hide mine at the loss of it. For every one that rolled down my face was bragging; boasting of an emotion he was too twisted to portray. I could never tell if he was more ashamed of the depression that haunted him, or the fact he liked marmite on pancakes. He was a boy of many quirks and I carried them with me when he left them behind. Dusting them off every year as a homage to him. I sit and I drink hot coffee from a glass, and I begrudgingly eat marmite soaked crepes. I think maybe I'm developing a taste for them, or maybe it's now just to me the taste of him. Not the taste of his lips that I remember, the sting of a chemical seasoning, but the taste of his memory as it is to me now. For all this talk of honesty I have yet to disclose my secret, because like the soldier of horror he was he wore the badges of his battles where all could see. And whether in the scars we both created, or in the sheets that cloak our secret torment within our eyes - we stand united in that fact. But the thing that makes me sick with shame, that writhes in my skin and plagues my stomach. Is not my grieving. It is not my love for him. It is not that I miss him every minute, of every hour, of every day. It is the horrifying fact, that sometimes, as the years have gone on; I forget to.