I can hear them now,
"Get off me, get off me,
Poor creature, poor creature,"
I have arrived at an impasse.
In what kind of world
Will justice be served
Based on the hem of my skirt;
In what world be it served,
Based on the drink in my cup?
I speak not on the forked tongue
Of a miserly bedfellow,
But on the wings of a **** moth,
Gorgeous and pale
And fragile and small.

I may be a **** moth,
But they named a war plane after me
For a **** good reason.

Like Severus and Lily,
We came to each other by chance.
I transfigured myself into your life
Already on a pedestal,
Our words chaining ourselves
To each other
Until death.

Years have passed
Without so much as a flicker between us
But here you stand
Today
With the words of our pasts
Strung together and hanging like frayed ropes from your wrists.

In my dreams you come to me
With your hand outstretched,
A snake burrowed into the cuff
Of your long sleeved,
Blue-collar work shirt.
I do not hesitate to take it.
I am bitten.

I wake up in a cold sweat,
The snake of men past
Now burrowed next to me
In the king sized bed.
I am not afraid
But I do not trust.

I live for the nights
That tread lightly into the hours of day:

Talking to you about anything
Is like mind-*******,
And not in the David Lynch way.

I promise
That I will not notice
The little things about you.

Like the way your lips curl
When you impersonate someone
With an English accent;
Or the way you hold your glass
Not like a forty ounce
But like a hand.

I promise that I will take your kisses
As what they are:
Merely stone-faced
Applications of misplaced subterfuge.

I will make my sufferings my own in you.
I will bear my cross and carry onward,
A gaunt figure in your otherwise electric life.

I am a sallow husk
And you are the sun,
My jaundiced being yearns for you
But only through artificial means.

I am the sociopath
Who writes you letters
In coded tongues
That the New York Times
Will ask for help deciphering.

I will ask you for your love
In the fleeting moments of the morning,
The brightness in your eyes finally aflame
And you will give it to me
But take it back when the Earth rotates once more.

I want to know
What Illinois smells like
Besides John Wayne Gacy's cologne
On a blue collar.

When I started working fifty hours a week minimum
At eighteen years of age
My father told me he was proud of me
For the first time.
What he didn't know
Was that I had been chasing my depression away
By masking it with exhaustion.
There have been times where I have worked thirteen hour days,
Four days in a row
Only to come home too exhausted to eat.

I consider this a triumph.

I spend my days off thinking too much.
I think about how easy it is to buy a gun in this state,
How I wish it was more difficult
If only to erase one more burden from my mind.
I spend a lot of time buying make up
That I seldom ever wear.
I read every single issue of The Walking Dead comics up to the newest one
In two days
Because my mind frightens me more than fiction.
I think a lot about leaving here;
Not in a way that would constitute a cry for help
But more in a way that sits in my belly
Like liquor on a cold day.
I feel the urge, it is there,
But I simply carry it with me.

Have you been shredded
By the tenacity
Of your alcoholism
Yet,

Or will we have to funnel
More worldly atrocities
Into you,
Filling you to bursting?

The swish in your belly,
The boldness of your talk;

Decimated.

Let me be the one
To **** all you are
With my well-kept home
And all-American children.
Let me poison you
With my son and husband's baseball game,
My seasonal dish towels.

Let me tear your being
With my baby
Who doesn't even suffer a diaper rash,
With my laundered and ironed clothes.

Let me destroy you in domesticity,
A cold beer at the end of the day
And too many addictions
Kept hidden.

Let me dismantle your establishment
While I bear my blemishes under the skin.

Let me break your concentration.

Let me make you think
I am perfect.
Let me make you think
That my family is sound.

Let me convince you
That you mean nothing
To the world
If only because
My children will be more intelligent
and more well kept
Than the one you poisoned.

Let me be
The Stephen King novel,
Bruce Springsteen song,
All-American house wife
And let me be kept far,
Far away from You,
Dazed and Confused
And depressed and medicated,
You.