You grab ahold

I push

I claw.


Words fly from my lips

Like poisoned darts.

They'll cut you open

They'll rub you raw.


You spit my venom

Right back at me.

You squeeze my hand

Crush me with your grip.


All of a sudden

Something invisible

Stabs me.

A steely cold

Settles in my chest

Rather than blood

Hot tears drip.

Which came first:

The chicken or the egg?

Well, the **** of the walk

Of course!


You ought to know, silly kid,

That he has always ruled the roost, —

Kicking up dirt

Crowing all the live-long day

Fighting anything that he sees

All to prove his strength.


That's how he has always been, —

One day, he just wanted to take his dominance

That little step further

And so, the world gave him a hen.


So quiet and gentle

Sweet and demure

She balances him out quite nicely.


She spends most of her days

Resigned to her coop

Laying egg after egg

In her warm, dark room.

She attends to the ****

Whenever he wants her

Then becomes a living factory once again, —

Producing babies and food

Food and babies.


She does this for most of her life, —

Until she gets too old, that is.

She dries up, gets fat

And, by Sunday,

She'll be on our table for dinner.


Laughing and chewing

Clucking and squalling

We'll sink our teeth in,

Never once thinking

About how her entire lifetime

Was defined by giving

And the ****, —

Well, it won't take him long

To pick out a younger, prettier chick

To take her place.


Which came first, —

The chicken or the egg?

Obviously, it was the **** of the walk, —

The one who screams his triumph at every sunrise

The one whose meat is too tough for us to devour

The one who will never, ever die.

Everything else is just a page in his never-ending story, —

Everything else

Is merely consequential.

Your broken parts are jagged, —

I cut myself when I was trying to gather them

And match them to mine.

Over and over, I bled bright scarlet onto your shattered China,

Until I created something halfway decent

And stopped to admire what I'd done.


I found a way to make it all fit

As if the Almighty had put us together like puzzles, —

I could have lied

Proudly stated how nicely

My sorrows played with yours.


But, my dearest,

That isn't the way

The man pulling the strings

Wanted this to work.

Our hearts never make the same clean breaks as our bones, —

We were built to spill our vulnerability for all to see

Hearts made ultra-sensitive

So that we'd always be sure to feel the pain.


Love's a bleeding thing, you see, —

We're all too likely to bite the hand that caresses us

Take a blade to the back we promised to stay behind

Highlight the worst words to come from the same mouths that we've kissed

As long as we get to see that same result.


Passion is not a selfless creature, —

It's an untamed beast

Taking delight in the heady lust of treachery

Finding romance in the primal notion:

If I bleed

You will, too.


Love is not for those without will

Or those who can not part

With certain parts of themselves

That will certainly be drained

By the vampire of devotion.


Love is for the well-meaning naïve

Much like myself

But, be warned,

Even those who wait on the suffering hand and foot

Are not selfless

Nor innocent.


Affection can be just as carnal a need

As a lust for blood.

It is a hunger

That might someday destroy me.

Until then

Here I will stay

Jagged bits of porcelain heart in my hands

Until I lick my own lifeblood from my skin

Blindly hoping that, this time,

The thirst might be sated.

I don't know you anymore

Please, leave our memories by the door.



Pack your bags

Take all your new burdens with you.

I won't be helping you

To carry them.




Waving goodbye

I'll bid you adieu

When you stare back at me

I'll take my bitter thoughts

And bury them.


Time came for us, love

That's the sad truth:

Not everything is meant to be forever.


If hope is a thing

That often shrivels and dies

Better late to bury it

Than never.


We don't know each other anymore

So go on

Leave our memories by the door, —

I promise you I'll take care of them.


Even if

We never see each other again

Know that, on my drunken nights

I'll be fondly sharing them.


You don't know me anymore

Set yourself free.

Leave your memories by the door.

My heart is breaking

Beneath all this agony

And none of it's mine.