If you wanted privacy,
you might have closed your blinds from time to time.
The devil doesn't knock upon entry.
He knows where he's wanted.
I've heard your conversations--
The bigotry,
the loathing.
I've ****** up filth through your floorboards.
I've tasted your tears,
mingled with sweat
from sins of the flesh,
cascading down your drains.
I've stepped through the hillocks of cigarette butts
you discard as carelessly as your dreams,
a little measure to meld your
environment and outlook:
the world as an ashcan.
I know you better than I'd ever know myself
because my assessment of you is
not gilded with pride or egotism,
not tainted by self-pity.
I know that you wanted this,
in spite of pained cries to the contrary.
I know you really wept for the innocence
you lost long before I let myself in your *****
You let the world in--
you offered yourself up with impunity for far too long.
You valued your life so little
as to put it on display for anyone's appraisal.
You were waiting on catastrophe
to prove you were worth saving;
I was merely the instrument.
I took nothing that wasn't proffered by your unlocked door.
Your home and your body share sentiments--
I simply took the welcome mat at its word.