On Duct Tape and Destiny

I have lived our time again

and again

searching for blame

But it wasn’t your fault or mine

it was the entanglements of fate and

late night texts and

dreams woven from wish rather than the actual world

It wasn’t at the hand of you or me or the angel that blessed our passage

it was writ in the sidewalk cracks we walked and

the flour we threw

 

But we were paranoid vessels, and we didn’t listen

We carried despair and writhing mental agony

and we sought to color the world that bled us of sight

 

We were opposites

seeking fair judgement.

I

for my sins

You, for your sacrifices

We were ghosts unto the other

yet necessary for tightening illusion

for convincing of false dependence

for drugging asleep when the cerebral chaos drew too near

 

The scales were aligned, unlike our stars

So we said

 

Crutches mounted upon crutches

Terrified of loneliness

we ruptured our bonds because

our shared lungs didn’t make us stronger, it made us suffocate one another

for purity

When we saw

what we did

we duct taped our organs together

We used a lifetime of duct tape

It was strong, but not everlasting

and eventually someone had to wield the scissors to free us both of our lies.

People saw. People tried to warn us

but we shouted our assurances at each other in a hurricane so violent

that everyone else faded to words

in a language I pretended not to understand

 

I said I wasn’t enough

I said

I simmered and cooked in my own fury:

it crusted on my eyelashes and grew cold because I never forgave

You said you had ample goodness

for the both of us and you were always happy and you

would never hold a grudge

We believed each other. We believed we could fix one another and that

was the mistake, the worst part of it all

Because it was beyond our control and perhaps

we could move ourselves more tightly wound to a destiny

never unfolded, but in the end

we were pawns on a chessboard of gods.

 

We slaughtered each other mercilessly

I spat heartache into your eyes: they no longer seemed full

of eager fizz, but wept with solidarity

You buried a knife into my Achilles’ heel and

I reeked of sorrow. We fought not for vengeance

but because it was preordained and

we both knew it was bound to pass

If we fought now, a slit jugular would hurt less

we were powerless against forces that bound us to the wheel of never ending

recklessness

An accidental manslaughter now was by far better, we agreed

than premeditated homicide which might eventually

come to pass

And with our fatal fortune, at least one of us

would be a martyr to innocence

We were afraid of death and afraid of life

and we died at the hand of one another for no other reason than

it would happen sooner or later

 

At the last moments before our odyssey, we avoided eye contact

and irrigated the dirt with individual grief

We mourned each other, ourselves

the nightmare of the life we repented

 

Then there was nothing

but quiet

I drowned in my lament

or thirsted for anything other than numbness

it was surely a dream

I had been stripped of everything

but my soul and it told me

nothing but didactic silence.

I felt you, you were a river away, in heaven

Everywhere you went was heaven

I should have known that from the scent of your hyperboles

 

I longed for reincarnation until I didn’t

 

I strangled myself

alone, almost content with the noose around my neck

But it didn't compare to your hurt and I lost faith until

I felt your long fingers lift the rope

and lead me from the gallows

You said we had made a mistake, you said

you wish we had stayed in the life together

I said

that I was hallucinating. You agreed

 

I couldn’t see anything

but the alcohol you offered me

I drank and drank

and was drunk and

felt alive and simultaneously dead

The label on the bottle depicted the way you laughed

I dropped it somewhere

between this coma

and the next

 

We searched

for someone to lead us out of hell

Even though I was already intoxicated by your intensity,

you said we needed

something fuller

So we searched for the ultimate portrayal

of our mistakes, someone to tell us where

we went wrong, how we could mend it

You wanted a more meaningful movie reel of our tales past

while I contented myself with the movie reel unraveling

upon your face

You seized me by the throat and told me that this

was the last chance

I fastened my nerves around my waist

tighter and tighter until they crackled

and lit

We saw the shadow lurking behind

a star and chased it across galaxies of bliss and unparalleled

treachery and tears that refused

to fall.

We prepared for

damnation from the teller of truth: who eluded us

until we caught it and its mask hid nothing

but a mirror

This poem is about: 
Me

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