Deon doesn’t let me go out much.
I hear friendly laughter beyond my door,
but when I twist the ****,
he presses ice to my chest
and tugs the cords on my guts down, down,
into my toes
and they get too heavy to move forward.
Somehow retreating is simple.

Deon soured my music.
I sang once,
poorly but proud,
but now, even when I just mutter,
he wrinkles and screws his face in contempt,
disgust,
and I interrupt myself,
get shepherd’s crooked off the stage of my mind.
I hear my shortcomings in the melodies of others as well.
“This is something I would sing,”
I’d think.
“This would displease Deon.”
I pluck those notes out of the air,
mash them into a black polka dot ***,
and swallow it,
and I feel it sitting in my esophagus,
unmoving, undigesting.

Deon doctors my photographs, imposes his face onto them.
My memories have his scowl watermarked behind every frame.
In the most radiant dusk he hides in the sun,
and when it dips below the horizon,
he lodges on the moon.
When my youth’s mistakes surface in my reflection,
he is the one below the tide,
pushing my guilt and shame upward to breach
and drowning forgiveness and redemption in the depths beneath.

He is everything I fear in the darkness.
He is the darkness.
In place of monsters and grabbing claws and plotting intruders
-that which I feared in younger days-
he is the haranguing of my heart beating mad,
and the disappointment of those I love.
My worth
in everything,
in myself,
are a light, he assures,
because he knows the dark is all I see.

He is the sound of an indifferent ocean when I dream;
a yawning, watery chasm hungry for me,
no dignity to even chew and savor my flavor,
sure to be salty from brine and tears,
tender from bruises from the beating of my own fists,
slightly sweet from a stubborn refusal to succumb to bitterness,
and bitter from that failure.

His body sometimes becomes mine in the poses I assume.
I am become Deon when my knees press to my chest,
when I am prostrate staring in my bed,
the uncertain scratching of my temple,
when I freeze seated at my computer typing words like these.
I am free from Deon at 4 AM,
when he sleeps,
when my concerned subconscious escapes the watch of my conscious warden
And desperately scribbles a memento reminder
that I am,
and am not him.
Alas,
the sirens blare and I am apprehended once more.

Living with Deon is hard.
His trials do not ultimately make me stronger.
They are cardiovascular atrophy removed from physical form
and given more destructive shape.

His knife is the one in my hand.
But the decision to use his knife as a knife,
or a carver’s tool,
or a paintbrush,
or a pen,
is mine,
no matter how firmly he grips my wrist.

The worst thing about him is that
he doesn’t want me living with him either.