xii

of that night
what i remember:
the warmth of your chest
and your heartbeat.
temporal dimensions bent
hanging off the rungs of your rib cage
and the desperation of your hands 

the truth is we were made for each other, and i say this only because i'm coming to terms with the fact that i am a monster and am losing my mind in the process. i keep falling in love with people. i keep trying to make people fall in love with me like i'm trying to prove something, tying strings around my fingers, tying strings around their wrists and knitting a web of loves i can hardly keep track of. i am a prison of a human being. i am a spidery prison of a human being. tying strings around their necks, pricking them with promises. stay here, i love you. and then i leave them there, their lives now woven in and tangled with mine, un-unravelable almost. held in place by the hope that someday i will love them more than i am afraid to lose them. someday they will squirm so violently their bonds will asphyxiate them. and so i figure if i should love someone, it might as well be you who cannot look at me with anything but hunger. who cannot give himself, not careless enough to be stolen. i cannot have you which is why we are perfect. are you seeing it? is it making sense to you? i am collecting lovers like flies. a proposition as much as a warning. perhaps an invitation. i bet you couldn't stay even if you wanted to.