GRUESOME, SORRY: CATHEDRALESBIAN SINGING TOO LOUD IN CHURCH, SCREAMING MY FEARS INTO SPEAKERS

gruesome, sorry

I tried to kill you. I picked up my knife and walked miles to your house, knowing you'd never changed your lock. When I got inside, you weren't there.

(Your name is a pathetic prayer I chant at my bedside, staring into the shattered mirrors that keep you binded to a life of introspection without guidance. I cry it out in my sleep, I beg and breathe for every syllable to reemerge as a full being by my side. Every night, I dream you are here)

So I walked to where you work nights, muttering under my breath a curse on my tongue that just so happened to be your name over, and over, and over. Mixed throughout is a broken sentence, thoughts that just couldn't make it out of my mouth how they originated. It was like speaking in soot and ash. The noises I created were not words, but rather a gravelly, unintelligible, depraved mess of sound. It was always you. It will always be you. Forgive me.

(I waterboard myself with thoughts of you every time I wake up. It's like I've been buried since you've gone-there's not a trace of you left-and every single morning, I claw my way out. I gasp for air after rebirth, and scream your dirt out of my lungs. The rocks won't dislodge)

When I got there, it was empty. The lights were on, but each entrance was locked. You must've been in there cleaning up. I grabbed at the handles and pushed as hard as I could before I slammed my side into the metal, pushing my feeble body weight against the bar that would've led me to you. I knew there was an alarm system, but if you hadn't left yet, I had time to do it before the cops responded. I kept pushing. I kept trying. I kept trying.

(You never really wanted to let me in, though, did you? You chose me, voluntarily, and you let your heart walk the walk that had created our path. You were methodical in your search, narrowing down each option until you had nothing left but me. I'd not left your side for five years; surely, I'd be the one. I sang with your sister, cleaned the dishes, baked bread, left kisses on your collar after work, and took pictures of your family without me. Perfectly, I had framed the painting of your life I created in the house that you built without me)

I finally gave up and bashed a rock through the window, the glass splintering off in incomprehensible directions as I clambered through the opening. My body was mangled, my bones seeming to crack and break to mold myself into the shattered shape of the opening. With each inch of skin passing through, more blood was tortured out by the transparent daggers lodged into my flesh. Sanguine pain dripped to the floor, fingers twitched around the handle of the blade, and I saw you.

(You spoke a lot to me about destiny. Fate, the interconnected lines of our souls dragging us together to let you consume me, piece by piece. You are the festering wound to the left of my sternum, pulsating with undeniable need for the pain of my one lover. You are the rotting meat on my bones that threatens to infect every atom, to stain everything that I touch. When you kissed her, you found a taste for carnality found only in a world outside our reach, infecting me with your incompleteness. Now I think like a zombie; like I am what is left of you, and my existence depends on exactly what you do next)

But I'm not allowed knives, anyway. So where did you go?