We haven’t spoken like we did,
Words feel like discarded currency;
Useless now, and inconsequential in hindsight.
Query into the why,
I respond with what,
Like a dam of unspokeness has burst,
And words flow past;
Powerful, but inevitably more destructive than I hoped,
Pushing away the life preserver I am offered,
I can do it alone, because that’s what it will come down to,
Dismissive of pessimism, you make claims of happy endings, so I refute:

“Babe, we’re fighting a cold war,
No one can win when there’s everything to lose.
Lines are drawn, allegiance implicit.
Unspoken resentment.
Vocal frustration.
A couple’s quarrel that never was,
Like Frankenstein’s monster,
The rearranged parts of our whole,
Pieces of fiction,
Light folly with cruel consequences,
Denial sets in,
My road to hell will always be paved with your best intentions.”

I will not hear, I will not see.
Willful disability,
Crippled with envy.
I am a monster with emeralds in her eyes,
Seeing the universe through glass tinted green instead of rose,
I am the monster who is thin and jagged,
Unable to produce my own warmth,
Cutting everyone near.

I am the monster who plays house,
The monster who wants it to be home,
The vicious beast with a place to rest its head,
It’s easy to be alone, but somehow less satisfying.

"My road to hell will always be paved with your best intentions.”

Our destruction is mutually assured,
No move is left unanalysed,
Hyperawareness.
Things we side aside before are the objects of argument;
Proxy wars.

I am a giraffe racing a gazelle,
Long strides mean nothing;
Beauty is the crowd favourite,
Tripping over my own limbs,
Tendons severed by chasing wildcats,
Falling, devoured, as beauty reaches the finish line.

Détente.