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Jon Shierling Mar 2022
I’m so ****** tired of feeling compelled to suffer a penalty for you falling in love with me.

You knew I was a Jackal when you first tasted me.

I don’t owe you an apology for having survived nightmares, for loving you the best I could with what I had while horrible things were happening that I couldn’t tell you about.

I’m not an imposter, or a liar or less of a man than I presented as.

I fell in love with you and I didn’t want to.

We tried to staunch the blood still flowing from each other’s wounds…without knowing that we liked the taste.
Jon Shierling Mar 2022
Enough then
I don’t need your permission
    Or a final whisper from lips that raised all my dead

The cathedral in my heart that I lifted up for you
   And filled with all my lonely ghosts
     It burns tonight

And tomorrow
  The Beginning
    The Work
      The Empire
Jon Shierling Mar 2022
When you caught me compulsively washing dishes at 3am

When we agreed to tell each other if there was anyone else

When you cried in your sleep and all I could do was hold you tight

When you were still there for me after flashbacks even though you didn’t know what was happening to me

When we were so shitglued that our accents came out and our friends had no idea what the hell we were saying

When you shattered your Chanel bottle all over your bathroom and I smelled like you for days after

When I tried to cook eggs drunk and you didn’t have butter or milk and had to save them from me

When a tiny version of you found my pirate wig from Halloween

When I moved heaven and earth for you at work

When you took me to the fanciest Italian place I’ve ever eaten at

When we entered a room together people stopped and noticed

When I caught you compulsively washing dishes at 3am

When you orchestrated Thanksgiving and taught me about family

When I bought you boot socks and moleskin to heal your outrageous blisters

When you took me along with you and your daughter to look at Christmas lights, and you didn’t know what I was fleeing from

When I found you folding my laundry at midnight, and I left my heart on the couch next to you
Title is a play on the book Freedom at Midnight. In a way this woman who once loved me helped to show me a different world, one I could belong in and be where I could be free from the past. Thus, Laundry at Midnight really means Freedom at Midnight.
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