• I see their eyes,
    how they stare at me.
    I am drenched in their pity,
    the putrid pearls draped cloyingly
    around my neck.
    They’re choking me,
    and there’s nothing I can do about it.

    Look backwards with a glance,
    turn to face the music,
    the march,
    the dirge.
    A swallow’s last song
    of dying desperation,
    the sweet trill of
    caged bliss.

    Your cries I hear not;
    my tears I feel not.
    The blood dries on my shattered face—
    let me stay in this
    darkened paradiso, this
    lucid hell.
    On seraphim wing
    I lie, cradled in the
    sin of a thousand lifetimes.

    Will you stay with me,
    will you love the madness I’ve become?
    Let my poison run through your veins,
    your blood;
    let my pathogen take you
    to the grave.

    I don’t mind the pallid corpses
    that litter the air I breathe.
    They can’t stare,
    they hold nothing for me.
    The painted lips
    and their broken hips mock me
    in their deceit,
    they’re completely gone.

    But though I despair over
    nothing there, it’s the lie
    I see in your eyes.
    Will you stay in the arms of an
    angel’s lie, with the tears
    of a phoenix adorning her face?

    Let me stay...