I don’t want to die for you to be left a widow.
  Not you.
  Not the fire in my room’s curtains,
  Not the scream in the sink,
  Not the glue that binds my lungs shut.

You, who wears my pulse like cologne.
You, who adores migraines.
You, who talks in-between my unfinished sentences.

The fever I despise yet love.
The sea I drink until I drown.
The taste of unfinished violence.
The vow carved into my spine.
The addiction I romanticize.
The hunger that signs my name when I can’t.
The dumb idea that razors its way through my thoughts.

  My wildness I swore I could hold,
  I’d rather die every day of my life,
  If it means I will die with you.

It’s a sign of weakness, they said, to show your face: “too pale, too tired, too human.”

My mind is racing, looping like a broken wheel… Do they hate me?

Every glance feels like a weapon; every word, a cold dissection. I try to walk through the crowd unseen, but I am simply raw meat on a butcher’s hook, spinning slowly under the fluorescent lights.

And then I see her. She laughs, and I think it’s a kindness, but she looks away too quickly. My fists tighten; the world sharpens into jagged edges. Pull her hair, I think, rip the scalp off, strip the mask, and see if what’s underneath is as hollow as what I feel.

But the moment passes, like all moments do. My pulse somehow slows, the crowd swallows me whole again. I have no mouth. I want to scream. I can’t. I want to decide something, anything, but the choices aren’t mine to make.

Don’t you see?
Nothing is decided by us, in this modern world.
It’s a strong bond to appearances.

I took note of your scathing criticism
It’s the best joke of the century
Hell, even of the millennium!

  “You should’ve learned how to change.”

Change? CHANGE?!
I changed so hard I broke the mirror
And swallowed the shards for breakfast!
  (The taste is particularly exquisite)
  (Taste? Heck, you can call it a rebranding!)
  (With a side of narcissism and a pinch of performance — natural for an artist!)
    (Believe me — it digests easier)
    (And leaves less of an aftertaste)

I became:
  Gene Kingstone
  Ásgeir Geirmundsson
  Frodo Clayhanger
  Rakin Badr Shamoon
  Ouya Ishikawa
  René Bérubé
  Sargent Fresne
  Fabien Giroux

Eight names, a thousand apologies.
Eight lives, and not a single one wasted.

Look at the barrel you set aflame!
And I’m the neologism you feared to create.

I only said it once
At lunch,

You didn’t ask,
But my mouth was tired of swallowing
Things with your name in them.

“It wasn’t just a thought,” I said.
“It happened.”
And I think I smiled,
Not exactly out of joy,
But because your silence felt heavy.

You looked at me like a painting hung upside-down, sideways.
I almost asked if you still liked the wine I have chosen out for you.
But you already “went to the restroom”

So I rinsed the glass
And called it a perfect day

I was standing in the fields one day, like I usually would be doing, legs deep in grass, the wind nudging my ears with things I hadn’t yet lived. The sky above me was in a shade of grey I couldn’t name.

  “The weather is beautiful today.”

That’s when the horse appeared.

He jumped, upright, landing with the brutality of a ballet dancer, although he shouldn’t know how to. He had only two legs, thin and humanlike, and one of its molars, impossibly large, vibrated, producing a melody I couldn’t recognise, yet somehow remembered.

It leaned close. His breath smelled like burnt tobacco and languages. Then it said:

  “But Aleksejs…”

Terrifying in its intimacy.

And just like that, it was gone.
No sound. No dust. No hoofprints in the grass.

Nothing.
  Nothing.
    Nothing.

I stood there, frozen.
Not cold.

Later, when I woke up (though I couldn’t say for sure when the dream began or if it had ever truly ended or even started), I sat on the edge of my bed and told myself:

  “Was it me he was talking to?”

Frankly, no one answered. But the top left corner of the ceiling pulsed once, lightly,
And for some reason, I took that as a yes.

A: A pump?
B: A pulse.
A: A ****?
B: A nurse.
A: A dump?
B: A purse.
A: A lump?
B: A curse.

A: An illiterate curse? Like the King of Suicide-Land?
B: Yes, and his land beyond this limited veil.
A: You mean my curtains?
B: The agreement you signed while asleep.
A: I don’t remember.
B: You weren’t supposed to. That’s how contracts work here.
A: So I signed away my thoughts?
B: Just the ones with teeth.
A: I liked those. They bit back when I cried.
B: That’s why they were taken.

A: And the King?
B: He governs with a broken wristwatch and a hymnal full of typos.
A: Sounds professional.
B: His grimoire is made of expired passports.
A: How charming.
B: He doesn’t speak anymore. Just shivers.
A: I think I’ve heard of him! When the showerhead told me—
B: That’s his embassy. In your bathroom.

A: Is this real?
B: You’re asking the wrong room.
A: The wrong room?
B: Yes. This room only answers while wearing someone else’s shoes. Try the hallway, it lies best.

A: And my dress?
B: Tomorrow evening.
A: Does it bleed?
B: Only when you wear it backwards.
A: That’s the only way I wear anything now.
B: Good. Then you’ll fit right in.

A friend once told me
  “Don’t lean on people, they always move and you’ll fall.”
    But what if?

What if I leaned with a knife in my ribs
  Just to keep it straight?
What if their shoulder was made of plastic,
  And I liked the noise it impregnated me with?
What if falling was softer than standing still,
  And comfort was found in bruises?
What if all I ever wanted
  Was someone to move?
  But toward me, not away?