Winter is never bearable when you’re alone.
Desperate, we huddle needlessly to unwanted bodies craving banal human comfort.
Maybe it’s this town: the potholes, the pitfalls, the pity partying on nights we lose a game.
No one wants to do what we came here for. No one wants to go to class. No one wants to write or read.
You work to make money so you can get fucked up so you can erase the fact that you’re stuck here for school but you don’t go because you’re working.
Then it’s those feelings that should’ve been more fully matured before college.
You meet HIM, and Him, and him and then they don’t even matter anymore after Hims are gone.
There was HIM, the one true love you thought you wanted for life.
Way to fuck that up.
There was him, the one you fucked up with. And though you hate to admit it, the whole thing was a mistake.
There was Him, the soul mate and the sweet summer lovemaking before he went away.
He had to go.
The heat’s even worse, it clings to your skin like the tight leather dominatrix costume you saw online.
Your sweaty back pops wickedly as you escape the heat. Open the door.
Walk out of the frying pan and into the cool fire.
Hell is happiness you’ll sacrifice everything to keep.
The devil himself you love, though it’s just a nickname.
You Know Who.
Nomenclatures for dark FABLED lords are for this lovely sweet specimen of human life.
His eyes…liquid and dark brown so that they almost blend with his pupils.
When you look into them you brush his soul with your fingertips.
Maybe he’s scared because he feels you.
You love your hands gliding over his flawless skin to massage is ever aching back.
You love the way his body reacts to your touch.
No one knows it’s him, always him.
The one who comes a calling, the one who always makes the first move.
Remember when you went to his house to watch a movie and he was waiting nude underneath the covers, his bare flesh exposed just for you?
So why does it have to be you? You’re the crazy one because you’re not the familiar one.
You are the victim but you let yourself be so.
You let him use you.
And here it is, the root of your insanity and the heart of everything*.
The danger is his fickleness, not knowing his mind, his motives.
Why must your love throb like a neural cluster of muscles, gossamer threads of electricity when he draws close to you?
You long to touch him but fear disconnection, the static of uncertainty.
Others want to pull the plug. Top flip the switch. To trip the breaker.
To jump the needle
from 0 to 2500 RPM on a night when you need to step up your game.
Your goal is to please, and when all you want to do is please him, what do you have when he is not near?
Nothing.
What about when he leaves soon?
Nothing.
Your skin will collapse inward like the shell you will become because his absence left a void so grotesque it tore you apart.
You were a wicked, coquettish person for him.
Why must you follow, be so arbitrarily blind?
But you wonder, “Who is more foolish: the fool or the fool who follows him?”*
You smile through your tears if someone catches that right off the bat.
Remember how you thought it was stupid that Jedis weren’t allowed to love?
That’s why you love Luke Skywalker, he changed everything. Maybe that will be the name of a son of yours.
You really just want to marry you know who. Why do you want to slave away for him so badly?
To prove you’re worthy to pop out the 5 kids that he wants (one of them named Luke?) and to build him a man cave for one of your anniversaries.
All this because you wanted to go here.
And then you wanted to walk into a cool tasty place on a hot day that made your thoughts retrograde to horrify feminists.
It’s him. It’s always been him.
He is the face, the heart, the soul and the energy.
He’s taking over your mind like he took over this collective.
Someone’s pointing the finger, and it’s at him.
Someone’ s pointing the finger
and it’s at you.
—
*First asterisk: reference to Within Temptation’s song “The Heart of Everything.”
*Second asterisk: reference to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, in which Obi Wan Kenobi replies to a smart ass comment from Han, “Who is more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?” when the Millenium Falcon is sucked into the Death Star.
