▼VII

I reach for fleeting candlelight. For the slipping of time as it warps my body and vision in the void of a warehouse temp work bedroom with a near-stranger who’s sweet kindness in full-lipped smile turns to indifferent scorn the moment true new light meets our bodies, drive-by lovers with quiet weapons swelled worse than bullets. 

and how at times I hesitate but in duality loathe the love that I have had. To say that I have given safety - to make another feel understood in the abstract of an ever ebbing state of displacement and collapse that is my dimension as a substitute for human connection has been blasphemy to the romanticism of my younger self, only wishing for my soul to be seen and to no longer be left out in the desolation of reality’s hand around my throat. 

The honest truth is all these outstretched arms in attempts of deliverance have been met with blades in the guise of roses and the thorns thick, kissing my body in the only agony that can touch me now. The only language I now speak. 

I am feral, always the caged animal always at odds with the world, using symbols of old divine desperation to disguise the absence of meaning in the grand decoration of the void. 

If the words of empty hope cannot save me then perhaps the vicious clenched teeth of honest despair and anger possibly can.