On The Two Angels That Visited Me At Work

To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.

—Rainer Maria

can I feel everything at once?

it is how I feel when I see you, my beloved—

grappling violently between

the edge of euphoria

and the pit of despair.

surrounded by a kaleidoscopic miasma

of dead things and broken dreams

rotting lies and bandages

slathered with nitroglycerin

oh, my love,

let us burn down the world together

and as we stand on the precipice of the ashes,

may we burn down with it

the screaming that bounces around the inside of my skull is back to grace me with its presence. guttural and keening and feral.

i take another sip from my soda can and pretend i do not hear it, because to let it out into the world, where it would transform from visceral agony to banal noise, would be worse than enduring it silently. at least this way i can still feel it. at least this way no one else has to.

i am laying flowers at the grave

of the man who killed me;

and there is nothing god could do

to stop me now.

fireflies honestly make me cry a little. out of gratitude and wonder. thank goodness we live in a world with bioluminescence. thank goodness we live in a world where it can fly.

The Winter, Alexandre Calame, 1851

I know he loves me because he's breathing the same air as me, if he didn't love me, he wouldn't be breathing.

I stood dead at a grave that was not mine

a friend of a friend long since gone, though

killing me only now.

grief is as death,

is as life,

is as humanity.