"I'm going to kiss you"
but the hands were already reaching for my throat
committed to misery
a year of asking to be choked
"I'm going to try to have *** with you"
but thats why I came to his bar
moral compass might have been against it
but the experiment had already come too far

It was awkward the first time
but I could tell how bad he wanted it
both drank too much
he was nervous--i was loving it
For no reason, I persisted
stayed in the lab for a year
for so long it was one sided
it was forcibly impersonal, a text and a beer

"Come with me to this"
but i knew i shouldn't
tagged along a few times
tried to stay objective--couldn't
I loved him then
****. no ***** to undo this
experiment ruined, cruel and casual
doomed, mediocre bliss

                        Then any eloquence ended. Science overcame reason in ways I thought impossible. He was consumed by insecurities and double standards and my revulsion only drew me deeper in. He left me once for being offended when he was outwardly rude to my friend. I cracked and was pulled back my arm in another bar--at least if he's this angry it means I'm having an effect, it's evolving. Didn't want to say the words but I begged for forgiveness.
                        He joked about ******* my friends; he recalled "girls" from his past. I tried to reciprocate and was met with the usual onslaught of hypocritical rage. I disdained this behavior but considered it a victory when it ebbed--I do not recognize what the past year has made me. I did all of this for something I was only ever capable of being half-vested in. When he screamed over me in public and the hands came reaching up for my neck again, I felt a comic guilt for first noticing it was a callback to when I first committed myself to this work. It was an escape that I manipulated into becoming a mad doctor's monster. I'd taken a repugnant mess and given it life, and was somehow mistress and mother. It hopped up off my table here. I spent the end of my days with my beloved abomination trying to save it from the townspeople.
                       Instead of saving anything, I killed us both, beautifully. Neither deserved love. I don't deserve anything, except the things I brought on myself. I can't eat or stop eating, I can't sleep or wake. I'm in constant pursuit of *** when any touch feels inherently wrong. I drink to feel worse to feel better and I watch the kind of **** that I swore to advocate against when I was a nineteen year old feminist. I don't even touch myself, because the smell of my own body isn't mine anymore. The curve of my hips isn't mine and neither is my done-up face. My monster's face is now anyone, though, and I'm much beyond the fear that nothing will be the same for me.