purge

i go to your door and i am holding a box for you. it is taped closed.

you open the door, and silently, i hold out the box for you to take.
"you can open it later, please, and do with it what you want. maybe, one day, we'll look through it together, and look back on today as the most magical day in the world...'

and you open it, now, taking out a knife from your pocket and cutting the tape that binds the flaps on the top of the box closed for when i carried it to your door. you say nothing, opening it, and reaching inside, moving the items within it around, inspecting some, ignoring others.

'please,' i ask, ' just take it all. that's the only thing. just don't pick out parts, and refuse to take it all because it needs all the pieces to work properly. i can't do anything with just the fragments you leave behind.'

silently, still, you reach through, pulling small shiny bits out, pulling the objects apart. i'm not sure if you are listening to me, or if you can even hear me, but just as watching you open the box hurt, watching you pull these things apart with a look of indifference on your face, it hurts more.

you dig and dig, and select about ten small cogs and bolts and hard and soft things, and you treasure them. you look at them as though they are the most beautiful things in the world. the rest of the box? you shove back at me.

'this is all i want,' you say. 'this is all i need. i can get everything else, hell, better bits, from other people. these are the only pieces i cannot find anywhere else.'

'but, fuck, it doesn't work like that! you need to take the lot.'

'don't care.' you furrow your brow, you look irritated, and i get scared that you'll give me those pieces back too, because you don't need me or want me at all. and i am desperate for you to have something, anything of me at all.

'i'll keep these things, and i will hold them so close that they imprint into my skin. if you ever try and take them back, my heart will break. i will cry to you, it will be the only time it looks as though i care, because i play games and you are a pawn, yes, and a useful one. i want to keep you on the board.'

it hurts.

'i'll kiss you goodbye, never anything else. you are no mystery, but i love you, but i don't. i'll fuck you silently, and look hurt if you try and lighten the mood, because i love you but i don't. you mean not enough to me to mean something, but you mean something. i talk in meaningless riddles so that you will never understand or know what i want because i need you, but i need you far away because you want me, and i don't want someone who wants me.'

he can look into me, because i ripped open my ribcage and there are organs, and a layer of fat, and snapped ribs displaying my heart nestles near lungs that breathe you in. it is not beautiful, there are no gentle butterflies, or fluxus manifesto breaking piano singers there. you cannot imagine and fill in the blanks of my bourgeois self, because the fleshy reality is there, and i refuse to veil it in the mystery and the seduction you crave. i will not seduce you. i cannot seduce you. you can have my secrets and the desert and the nothing and the atom and the neon lights. take them take them take them. you can rip apart the box until nothing works anymore, and i try and i try and things start beating again in other directions and then the flow of blood reverses as soon as i hear your name.

i would write these words for you, but you would never read them. so i write them and they will be read by others who would take the box like it was beautiful and the most incredible sensual thing on earth, not like some toy to scatter around. oh yes, i mean something to them, with my artlessness and my little songs and the way i sleep all day... but you, you cunt? you? you call me, voice breaking, because i needed to take them back, and my head weakened my heart weakened by my head. i'd even be satisfied with intimacy not relationship, but you even deprive me of that. if i go to lean close, or hold your hand, as i would with other friends, you pull back as though i am vile. but i call because i am in town, and you are there, eyes lidded, features too large for your face, so much movement, oh Fuck you, this is pointless, this is always pointless, i cannot get it out but every little bit helps, dual, every little bit helps.