[ I wanted to explain to you how darkness loves me ]

I wanted to explain to you how darkness loves me but I knew you'd tell me that doesn't mean I have to love it back. 

I wanted to ask: Is there a logic to these infinite moments, lined up and waiting; to all this dislocation and how the little noises of a life being lived keep getting written in the past tense? you were supposed to say: If you could change the worst of yourself, which part would you choose to fix? You were supposed to say it just like that, so I could tell you: Everything.

I wanted you to ask me why I've been talking in my sleep, to see if you cared enough to take my nightmares and make them yours. I wanted you to know: I had another dream of killing. Of being killed. Of an ominous quiet in that inhuman place where human monsters are made. Just next door, where all your shadows have teeth.

I was wishing I could take it back, thinking: If I keep looking down, if I keep holding this breath, if I keep entirely still - he'll never notice I exist. I was trying not to remember his eyes, the hostages on their knees, the knife in the hand I thought once might have been my own.

I didn't stop him. I was still hoping.

And then everything goes monochrome, except the fire and the blood and the silver sound of the knife going in, the red and black sound of the knife coming out. I didn't stop him. I just let it happen, wondering why I know his eyes. I couldn't stop him, but I didn't feel a thing. Just cold. And when he finally speaks, at the blurring edges of my sight, his voice is a prayer of acknowledgement that sounds exactly like my own.

So I wanted you to know: I'm trying to stop walking like I hope that you won't notice, with that comfortable measure of self-loathing in the set of my shoulders, and the expression on my face that says I'm trying to keep the chaos hidden underneath my skin. Like just the act of breathing might make something in my chest shift and start to break. I wanted you to want to know what I've been saying in my dreams, to see if you cared enough to take my secrets and make them yours.

I wanted to explain to you how darkness loves me but I knew you'd tell me that doesn't mean I have to love it back.

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