the space above my ears.

Rabies

I feel I must disclaim tomorrow's allegations.

Sorry in advance, folks.

Sorry that I'll be strolling through your town, killing off your firstborn sons if I arrive at your doorstep and do not find a live starfish waiting there for me on the welcome mat.

Sorry that I'll gaslight you after you've lost everything, make you crazy by saying over and over and over that you didn't see what you think you saw.

Sorry that I'll make your pain into an illusion just by saying it is such.

This is no democracy, you should know that by now and if you do not...well, that must be your fault.

It's none of my business if your family is crushed by a slab of sheetrock rolling down a hill, none of my business who survives.

On my half of the island, four dolphins carry the house to shore and it's free; the only catch is they get to keep the garage.

I stand up and do my little skit, receiving all the attention and lemon water I could ever want in return.

I wake up in the nighttime and draw back my curtains to greet the angel of my choosing, invite them in for tea and help them with their homework.

I don't want to be the villain, but it just so happens that I broke myself a little too much so I am simply out of options.

I'm just the masochist in the box, contorting myself enough that I can feel the skin on the back of my neck begin to tear.

I'm the thing Pandora freed.

I enter the room with gunshot echoes following behind.

I sit in a chair somewhere in the middle column two seats from the front.

Everyone is looking now because it's me, the big pale man in a dry-cleaned suit who just finished his nine to five day of knocking down cities using only his feet.

I am this, aside from the times I dissolve into an enigma of thought, of course.

Times when I picture you and a stray cat sitting on the balcony together watching a meteor shower.

Times in the mudroom alone where everything smells like smoke and boot leather.

I slid the jacket off your shoulders and you looked at me like you've never been so close to someone before.

You told me this was the closest you'd ever been to completion.

It was almost the truth, baby, almost, almost.

Your organs are vacuum packed, stored away in the freezer.

You walk around empty now, lighter, but less.

I find myself wondering what would happen if I put them back inside you, fitting them together like a puzzle, like they used to be.

I wonder if they would stay cold or if they would melt into mush and sit at the bottom of your stomach eternally.

I wonder if they would crystallize the rest of you too.

The poets and the capitalists and the harems will shout at you from everywhere but the places you can see them.

They're angry, angry at you, angry at the things that made you.

Angry at the icicles forming on your ribcage.

It's fair, you muse, their distastes for unfamiliar anatomies.

I have no place to be, but I am angry too.

Not frustration, no- a guillotine kind of angry

The kind of angry where I want to watch your head be sucked up a siphon because your face will look stupid smashed against the glass and at least I'll have that to console me.

The anger that is reflected off a dark screen.

Everything you weren't, I built out of pennies and fastened on as an extension.

When I was finished, it was too much and the breaker tripped.

I guess I don't know what I expected.

It's hard to have anything but a one-track mind when I have eyes for nothing but you.

It's hard to put away the desperate character flaws long enough to notice the snakes slithering up the chicken wire underneath the ladies' ballgowns.

It's hard to admit to myself that I must have let Satan slip by somehow while I was lost in you.

It's hard to admit I have always been wrong.

I'm here now and I'm admitting it to a childhood acquaintance with heart cancer.

You would roll your eyes at this but it's a start, my love, I have started.

It's your turn to pick an angel- you can have mine, even, if you wish.

They will become yours, appearing outside your door periodically to hand you the science test you failed. 

It won't be perfect, certainly, but it will be in one of hell's circles that is less than seven, at least.

One where angels can go without turning to cinder at the gates.

A place that is either too hot or too cold for me, depending on how you look at it.

They'll have to make an entirely new circle for me, maybe even two for the sake of continuity.

They'll build it all up, knock it back down, take inventory, then do it all over.

Kiss and unkiss your lips, tell everyone and then take it back.

A pendulum of things unrequited.