Pain is following me,
initiating me into your miseries,

most at home schooling me with what it’s dropping out,
blood on your paper route,

pages of shouting poured
into a mouth no good neighbourhood or condo

board would ever allow, filthy words too loud to
discredit, to discount,

purchased blame is all but
misplaced, an investment well-made when shame is what

you intended by giving it to me, your gift
of insecurity

in the piss-poor form of
your bad childhood’s worn-out security blanket,

a torn-opened silk rabbit, a creepy fucking
doll idolatrizing

my downfall, reading me
like a letter with its scrawling eyes, writhing while

following me, and its soft-spoken tale is all
that can be recalled, each

syllable’s miracle
is that speech can at all remember how or what

to call us, strange forces afoot, spirits working
to encourage a flaw

in love’s great work, spilling
dark colours onto our once-vibrant portrait, that

canvas torn between us, my perversion, and your
worthlessness, two men left

wondering if countless
hours put into it did it any good, this mess

of each other self-doubt tangled with one regret,
threaded through by wet hands

strangling innocence from
romance, giving thieves the keys to every peace

in an instant, that moment when you left that keeps
lifting silence, heavy

steps, feet tripping over
themselves as if walking away from the future

had no consequences, any truth better than
your excuses, my one

regret with which I live
that I convinced myself to stop believing in

my Self, conjuring from pure fiction a version
no better than someone

afflicted with rabid
indecision, uncertain if a serpent’s milk

can sustain this withering filth placed on chaste lips,
or fix your silk rabbit,

all of this acidic
writing compromising my integrity and

my intentions, just to exorcise from public
assumption their rumours

unraveling me, this
rambling a remedy, bleeding your pain from me,

withdrawing from plain sight what should remain hidden,
your name left unwritten.