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my insides are rotting under your gaze and in the dark, i’m as good as dead. leave me here where i rest and fester. tell me — is your blood the same colour as mine? are you somebody’s missing rib? do you dream at night of a world you did not create? of a world where your name is not known? is every word you utter a compromise? the roof of my mouth is made of metal and the taste has become as familiar as the lines of my palm. the rot spreads through my veins like the roots of an infected garden awaiting harvest, withering even in the kindness of the sun. i will apologise when my blood spills to your precious earth, for i have broken something precious, and you will cast the infected soil aside, for it is futile. something so filthy cannot be precious. something so broken cannot be fixed.

somewhere along the line, peace starts to sound like complacency and faith like fantasy, and they don’t tell you that there is a violence in survival. is your madness a barbed fence? an impenetrable wall? an arrow flying toward the stagnant enemy? tell me — do you fear complacency and fantasy as well? the day will come that they fade and you will be left preaching to an empty room, speaking to the ceiling like it’s listening, like you are heard. and you will pretend, if only for the vaguest sensation that you exist, that there are eyes watching you, that each crumble of the brick around you, each stumble and trip, each stammer and choke, is at the fault of the enemy and not your own incessant delusion.

don’t you know that you and i are the same? begging to be believed, yearning to be known. rattling the very essence of existence in an effort for any kind of recognition. is your madness my own? tell me — does a god feel lonely? does a god feel guilt? are you sorry?

make this last, won’t you? let me savour this dark; when it is gone, i will miss it. have you found the peace that you have starved me of? are you tender with it? do you cradle it like it is sacred? tell me — am i a joke to you? must i apologise with a split vein? is my pain the only atonement you will accept? don’t you know that it is cruel? to break me open and complain of the mess my tears make? i will collect my blood and tears in my cupped hands, and they will seep into the lines of my palms and drip between my fingers, but i am trying. my god, i am trying. even in my rage, even in my pain, i will try for you. i love you and i love you and i love you, but oh, how you sicken me.