Dear heart. I am the one in charge here. Neuroscience has long taken the responsibility of handling emotions from you. I am in charge of everything in this body, dear heart, I tell you what to do, and you do it. I think we both know I'm the better thinker here.

So why must you ache, why must you suffer for what I do? For every scalding thought you recoil in your cage and pound on the bars of your prison, wishing to be worn on someone's sleeve, dear heart, you've been hidden for too long. You don't know how this world works, and I do, so you must obey me when I tell you what to do. I know it hurts to keep beating despite of how the chemical reactions in my mind may affect you. For every feeling I take as a thought, every thought you mistake as a feeling, we both protest. For a long, long time we refuse to communicate with each other and I know you are tempted to rest, to stop beating because you're the one aching. It's not me, dear heart, that clenches like a fist, crumples inward like a useless scrap of paper, collapses on itself like a star on the brink of a supernova, it is not me, dear heart, that gets hurt.

Why do I only ache when I'm facing a mathematical problem, a complex theory, a questionable logic, a memory-loss crisis, why do I only suffer when I think really hard, even though I am the one in charge of emotions and feelings? Why is it you, not me, that a knife buries itself in when there is emotional pain? Why is it you that has be shredded into blood strings and crimson feathers of sinew, as if you were plucked from an angel's bleeding wings while heaven screeched its protest? Why are you the only one that is punished?

Dear heart, I am sorry. I didn't know why the body is made this way, that you have to be the one on the edge of a cliff while I sit somewhere safely plucking your strings. You are the one facing the endless plummet into a chasm of fangs and jagged rock, and it is up to me to make sure you stay alive, why, dearest, dearest heart do you have to be shackled to me with a silken collar? I can control you, but you have the freedom to fall, and if you do, I will be the one to grab at a protruding edge somewhere on the face of the cliff, and I will pull hard to get us back up.
Because if I don't, we will both die, and I'm the thinker here, I'm the one responsible for both of us, dear heart, I am the one in charge here!

You won't survive on your own. That's why I'm here to take care of us, because neither of us would exist without the other, without me you will be dead, without you, I will be worse than dead, so dear heart. Dearest heart, let me take the reins, let me hold the strings, let me tell you what to do, I'm sorry you can't be free. I'm sorry I hurt you with the thoughts and the memories inside me.

Let me control you. Let them call me abusive, let them call me terrible, let them call me cold and cunning, let them tell the world I am foul and violent, I don’t care!
I am here for you. I will take care of you. And when all you wish is to cease the wearying repetition of living, I will give you reason to keep breathing.

I hate you.

You told me once hate has no substance, there is nothing to gain from it, not enough meaning in it for a good enough reason. You told me hate makes no sense as an emotion, that no matter how I try to explain it will never justify anything as long as I say hate. I told you I hated everyone, you said no, you don't you just think you do because you're a cynic and I won't bother reasoning with you.

I hate you.

You were probably right, that I didn't really hate everyone, because now I know I don't—I hate you, and only you, because you've captured everything I value and imprisoned it within the cage of your heart, twisted every breath of shadow into light so I have no more place to hide, carved the memory of you into my flesh until it sank to my bones and echoed in my being until my soul knew nothing else. No one expects me to not hate you because you've shackled my wrists, chained to your throat, locked your fingers around my every breath and molded the air into the shape of your mouth, you insufferable, selfish boy, how could you sink your claws into my chest and steal what I intended for another, selfish, selfish, you are selfish.

I hate you.

I hate you for confining moonlight in the hollows of your bones, for melting the stars into your bloodstream, shredding the blanket of the night sky and dipping them into your irises, digging your hands into my skin, gorging your name into my palms, letting yourself sink into my being, how could you let yourself be a part of me? How could you claim the right to tear me apart, to open me like a rusty zipper, to peek inside just to see what I hide, you greedy man, greedy, greedy, you are greedy.

I hate you.

I hate you for the warmth of your hands around mine, the soft, lilting caress of your voice overlapping mine, your smile, full of understanding when nobody else has the same gift for me, your calm a marble wall, unyielding before the crashing waves of my frustration, you selfish, greedy man, I hate you, I hate you, listen to me and rage with me, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

I hate you.

I dedicate every waking moment to picking out your flaws, inspecting them, prodding them, forcing them to grow into something that resembles repulsive, knowing all at once that it's all futile. Convincing myself you are worthless, you are nothing, you are all that I hate, and I wonder if there is even the tiniest chance that in the future I could look at you and know there is nothing I want more than to leave your vicinity rather than ache for the distance to be closed like a trapdoor on the secrets I keep beneath the bowels of my heart. I wonder, I  wonder if one day I could breathe easily with or without you, rather than feel your touch and die for just a second then revived by the butterflies in my stomach.

Even butterflies can have knives for wings, you oblivious creature, I hate you.

I hate you for not knowing, I hate myself for not saying anything, and maybe I can thrive on hate, and ignore the other side of this darkness, pay no heed to the gentle cackle of fire laid deep in the hearth where I keep burning myself, as if one day I would stiffen into a dark crisp and disintegrate with a single touch, maybe I can keep hating and maybe this loathing will solidify into an impregnable shield, but knowing that it will keep getting harder and harder, more and more brittle, until I crack over the edges and shatter like shards over you.

How right you were, you selfish, greedy, oblivious man I hate you, I hate you, I love you.

I wonder if there really is a difference.

There's this song I always listen to that no matter what the circumstances never fail to make me think of you. It has become a second nature, I think, for my mind to conjure you within its convolutions while my heart tries not to ache at the delusion, the images painted by the words sung into my ear as I close my eyes and see you here, here beneath the shutter of my eyelids. You turn my heartbeats into a rapid continuous explosion of dying stars. I spend hours staring at the ceiling trying to make sense of why everything seems to be a memory of you, I try to find clues in the pages filled with poetry about you, and all I end up realizing is that you are the color of dappled sunlight against verdant spring grass. And the long winding roads snaking across the city lights I only want to get lost in you.

There's this song I've just begun to get addicted to, and no matter how many times I listen to it the only thing it keeps telling me is you, or maybe that is all I can hear, with my ears deaf to everything else that should make more sense than your name being an endless chant that never fails to be a vise on my throat, a shackle on my wrist, and I know, I know that if I turned away from you I would always look back to see if you show any inclination of stopping me. Hope, dreadful hope, that I somehow matter to this boy who seems to see everyone as the same, or maybe he has simply listened to the same song too many times and he's tired of everything, I wish I could touch him. I wish I could be the lines on his palm tracing past stories in the dried-up riverbed of his veins. Or to be the candlelight in his eyes, love, I don't need a wicker, you're all I need to keep burning.

There's this song I once heard from somewhere, it doesn't have words in it but it spoke of you more than I ever do, as if the blanks where the lyrics should be were lines connecting the pinpoints of lights visible in your laughter, as if the musical instruments were screaming what I never could, that whether you realize it or not, right now I feel like I can love you forever. I am running out of words, perhaps somewhere, miles away from me you're singing yourself to sleep, and my heart begs me silent so I can listen to the tune only I can hear, only I can know that you are the note that spurs the crescendo of an angel's praying song, that even god will listen to the heaven of your voice.

There's this song I just heard today, there's something about it that makes me sad. But then again every good song always sounds melancholy to me, as if there's a filter in my ears that permits only the tears to seep through, locks all the joy out of my body, and I can't really blame it, because happiness is a poison to the bitter sea churning in the pit of my stomach. It will **** me to be happy, and you're the blade that slides neatly through skin, flesh, and bone, cleaves through soft sinew as if it's nothing more than paper to be torn, shredded, ripped open like a smiling wound. You would **** me if you could, and it's all I can do to gasp through the choking sensation of your name lodged deep in my throat, to let my chest be filled with echoing thunderclaps.

So sing, whisper, speak to me, let my name spill from your lips like a waterfall tumbling over the edge of a cliff, let it crash down to the ocean of my heart, let the wave tear itself apart so  I can breathe, breathe, love, let me fill you with my breath, let me live, I don't have to leave, though your laughter consists of ricocheting shrapnel from the explosion of your touch, your smile is the deadly curve of a bowstring drawn tight nocked with cupid's poisonous arrow, your eyes are two storm clouds spitting lightning and reverberating with thunder, you are death. The beginning and ending of a lifelong love story.

To love is to die.

It happens to us everyday, when we wake up in the morning and fall asleep in the evening. It happened to me when I realized that the backs of my eyelids are dotted with stars, if not painted with dreams, that my eyelashes are the sun's blinding rays, my irises the sunrise, the first breath of a new day. Love happened to me when the shadows coalesced into a man, when all my greatest fears solidified into life, when the very thing I have always been terrified to have came into being right in front of me.

When I saw him, I died, and that was the moment I felt most alive, when my heart stopped beating and the blood in my veins stopped flowing, until I was a statue of life, a promise, an eternal vow. When he killed me, took me to the kingdom of my own doom, and witnessed the onslaught of demons and dragons, when he killed me, my heart beat faster than it had ever done in my entire life, every word from my mouth a part of a poetic tapestry hung on the walls of a fairy tale castle every broken heart has crushed into nonexistence, the sound of liquid life filling my body like the sweetest sonata played to the accompaniment of wedding bells and death tolls, and when he killed me, I felt so alive.

His very existence is death to me, a second of silence in the prison of my chest, the walls of my heart empty of reverberating drumbeats, all the blood burned out from the corridors of my body, because he is an arsonist, and every one of his flames has left an imprint of himself in the places where he has hurt me, an unhealed scar, a deadly wound, he has killed me over and over.

He has killed me so many times I forget what he can do to me, and every time I live again I forget that it was he, it was he, who has slain me, and every death so beautiful it gave me life, every dying day a flood of undiluted ecstasy, every failing light a breathtaking dawn breaking over the sea of the sky, like the blush stroked across a maiden's cheeks, and yet the smiling wound of a dying man.

When we spoke, every word was a great stone dropping to our stomachs,and perhaps it was a diamond, or a rock, or a star. Every breath taken in between our responses  was a language of its own, a gust of wind whispering untold secrets to the sentient woods, every howl of laughter a tale of its own, a song of serenity, identical to an elegy, a grieving cry.

And when we touched, we kissed, we died every second of every moment, as if we were stealing each other's lives and breathing it back to one another, and it all lasted an eternity, a never-ending cycle of dying, living, dying, living, dying, living, dying because there was no heart, no brain, no lungs, nothing else existed but the touch his lips against mine like moonlight against the obsidian face of the night, and then living again because there was no need for anything else but to touch, to touch, to **** each other and give life.

Death makes us hold on to life for a day, then for the day after that, the one after that, and then the one that comes after, until we're like a vise on each other's wrists, trapped in one another's eternity, until we're as ancient as the forests that breathe as we do, until our roots have dug into the earth so deeply we never learn to let go until the very last moment.

When I loved him, I died. Like a flame flickering out of existence, a leaf crumpling into nothing more than debris, a majesty collapsing into ruin.

And never before in my life have I ever felt more alive.

Boy, don't you dare look at me like that.

Like I'm a question, a riddle, a puzzle, jigsaw pieces that don't quite fit with each other. Like I'm an unsatisfactory answer, a justification riddled with holes, a problematic solution to a solvable problem. Don't look at me as if I'm a blank sheet of paper, as if you can see what isn't there, as if you see beyond this cage while even I can't see through it. Just...don't look at me.

Boy, don't you dare talk to me like that.

Like I'm a pulsating time-bomb that is always on the verge of explosion but never really toppling over the edge, like a shard of glass that cuts everything it touches yet can be easily crushed into mere beads of crystals, a beer bottle with liquid forgetfulness as its contents, a bucket of blood, sweet, luscious agony, a cacophony of pounding hearts and rasping breaths. Don't talk to me as if you know I'm about to shatter because I'm not going to be scattered in front of you, no, boy, trust me, I can handle this.

I can handle this.

Boy, don't you dare stay with me like I'm the one who needs you, like I'm the one aching for you, like I'm the one who loves you, like you're the one for me. Don't get close to me as if you're actually planning to touch me, don't, I hurt everyone, please don't touch me like this. Like the soft brush of a bird's wings against the sunset, the caress of ink against paper, the whisper of the wind thumbing through the rustling leaves, boy, don't get close to me.

Please don't come near, I am an explosion of splinters and jaded rocks and pain and anger and spite, boy, stay away from the explosion. You might get hurt trying to help me, I don't need your help, I don't need the glimmer of your smile, the vastness of your eyes, the comfort of your lips, I don't need you, boy, listen to my lies, believe them as if I am a stranger to you, an unread book, an unused drawer, boy, I'm no good for you. I'm not good enough for you. Listen to my lies and believe them.

Boy, don't you dare love me like I'm your forever, because I'm not and I will never be, I am not forever. I am only a single instant, a flicker of flame, the dying light, the purple dusk, I can't be yours, boy, I'm not enough. Don't you dare care for me as if I'm a snapped wing, a broken bone, a bruised face, a torn knot of sinew that still won't stop beating at the bars of its prison, boy, I can't let my heart out of its prison, it's dangerous when it's out of its cage, boy, it might see you. It might know you and recognize you as my forever, and I will trip over my own feet falling into your eyes, boy, this heart needs to remain caged in its prison.

Boy, don't scold me about this, I know what I'm doing, I won't wear my heart on my sleeve, I won't set it free no matter how many times it hurts itself trying to break the bars of its jail, even if the edges of my ribs become knives with serrated edges I won't let this stop, I won't let this heart out.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my heart.

Please forgive me, boy, I lied, I've lied so many times I've lost count, so many times the truth is nowhere to be found but in my chest, no, boy, I won't let you in. My insides are hollow and lined with blades, all you'll find there is hurt and anguish and blood and unshed tears, and silent screams and the soundless slamming of fist against flesh and bone, boy, I can't let you see this. I can't let you get hurt.

I'm sorry, heart, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Boy, I know you know me, I know you know I love you, so please, please stay away. I am no good for you, I am not good enough, not whole enough, not enough, boy, I'm just not enough to fill the empty spaces inside you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my heart, boy, I love you, I love you, boy, leave me now and don't ever show yourself again.

Just don't.

Please don't.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Boy.

Please don't break my heart.