fox

I remember being eight and the sinking feeling in my stomach when I knew I was caught doing something wrong, when I knew something bad was happening that I could not prevent.

I’ve never felt that as much as I have around you. 

You weave a web of convoluted lies and half truths. I turn a blind eye, full of naive delusions of love. I know I am digging my own grave, and you guide my shovel.

I see your phone flash in the corner of my eye, I wish I hadn't. Half a second of familiar colours and shapes is enough for me to know. A slip of your mask.

I pray to forget. You’ve taught me that ignorance is bliss when the truth is the blade in your hand. I beg and plead, but you wont let it go, even as it's double sided steel bleeds us both.

The ache has subsided, now just a sporadic memory.

I wish we could still be friends, but you're better now, happier. and I know what I am. what we were. I am painfully aware of our eternal turbulence.

So I’ll make my bed in the leaves beneath that gnarled oak out back.

In the sunset glow I will release my jaw, at last.

I pretend I do not feel the star collapsing in my chest. Ignorance is bliss in the face of the gaping, ugly emptiness left behind.

I hide behind evasive eyes.

The wood stain on your floor looks awfully interesting tonight. I memorize every grain beneath my feet before I risk a sidewise glance.

Reckless.

Meeting your eyes is to look right into the sun. To fly to high and melt again in your embrace.

I don't know how much of me there is left, I am a candle at its end.

But I revel in this sadistic dissection of my heart. A martyr to my own delusion.