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