love spell from the pit of hell

i’ve been trying to turn this pain into something pretty. or at the very least, something poignant. but it’s just a dull buzzing in my chest. as if my lungs are filled with wasps like the back patio before the tree got ripped out. i don’t know what’s true. i don’t know what’s real. when you live in front of the high beams for too long, they burn out your retinas, render you unseeing. i’m so burnt up, been running a fever since you landed here. i want to tell the truth to everyone. but i don’t want to litter, don’t want to carve everyone else into dumpsters, don’t want to fancy myself prey. i just want to be an elephant, too big to be crushed. you’d use this moment to shame me for being an omnivore, but better that than a cannibal like you. how did my heart taste, love? when you wrenched apart the ventricles with your canines? did my blood go down more smoothly than the sour monkeys you guzzle? you’re an addict, convinced you’re a god. you are the hearth, singeing & torching everything you touch. but even hesphaestus wasn’t as pathetic as you are & his wife didn’t even want to fuck him. & i remind myself again that athena, too, was broken. it always comes back to mythology with you because you’re always trying to magnify your lies into something that matters. but they don’t. they’re just the ramblings of a forgotten little boy parading around in his absent father’s old work boots. just the idle musings of a child stuck blaming his mother for his own inadequacies. grow up. & wash the dishes by hand as if that will ever remove the sins from under your nails. obsessed with suffering, with struggling, but all you ever do is drugs & jerk off to your ex girlfriends’ insta feeds. ah, yes, you’re so clearly above your material needs, so full of growth & ascension. no one can compete. no earthly pleasures swallow you…except social media & ketamine & cannabis & beer & infidelity. the king of celibacy. the angel on high. imagine a world where you are neither deity or demon, but just a man toiling with what it all means. imagine a universe in which it is okay for you to just not know. one where you don’t put words in others’ mouths or battle kindness with cruelty. but you cannot because you aren’t as smart as your mommy said you were. you think you own your own depth, but you’re falling down the elevator shaft just like me. how does the denial taste for you, dear? because mine tastes like carcass, like steel wool against braces. selling myself the notion that it doesn’t count as hitting if the hand is open. that it doesn’t count as violence if the strangulation ends in unconsciousness & not death. it doesn’t count as betrayal if i didn’t find out until after we already ended. doesn’t count as brutality if there’s a granule of truth in the insults, as assault if i’m wet between the thighs, as abuse if i don’t call it that. but the pearls my brother gifted me are still shattered from your anger. & turtlenecks give the illusion of protection from your palms. i want to hate you, but when i close my eyes, still all i see is you, a little boy just trying to be loved, trying to race across the football pitch without tripping over your own feet. if i try, sometimes i can picture your face the first time you slapped me, can conjure up the confusion, the fear i felt. trying to make amends, trying to rectify the duality between the sweet boy with the diet coke clenched in his fist & the twisted man with eyes clenching shadow pinning me down. i never thought i could fix you, i can’t even fix me. but i did think you’d drop your viciousness, your hunger, your violence if you felt safe enough. i never created safety. but you destroyed mine. i digress. the point isn’t to use you as a dart board or a scape goat. the point is to rip your fangs out of my flesh so i can bleed it all out. i know you’ll read this & love how much you occupy my thoughts. you live for infamy because it confirms all your biases. oh mr. manson, you look so handsome! my mother fears i am squeaky fromme. she prays to your grandmother’s god that you are gone. i pray to my god that you find your way home. sometimes, i want you to pay. i fantasize about all sorts of atrocities befalling you. but if i peel it all off, get to the root, i actually just want you to be who i thought you were. i want to spit on your mother & castrate your father. i want to rip apart the seams of time, dissect them, & figure out when & where & who injected you with this sadism. they keep saying i’m lucky to have made it out alive, but i’m not out, i haven’t made it out, & there’s a part of me that believes i’ll be trapped here, won’t make it out, until i’m not alive. i can’t trust a single breath, no matter how shallow or deep. & i’m feeding the monster by writing this, by posting it, by allowing you to see just how in your grip i still am, but i don’t care. i’m tired of feeling foolish, of ingratiation, of over explanation, of strangling my vocal cords because i’m auditioning for the role of you in the production of my life. you are the same as bulimia, just a violent void that wounded my throat. but she taught me to purge & that’s what i’ll do to you. stroke your ego as i do so but i. don’t. care! i am so sick of every move i make being observed from afar, loaded into a gun, & fired at me whenever my shield slips. i am not your prey. I AM NOT YOUR PREY! when i was seventeen, i wrote a poem promising i would not be silenced, but consistently i failed in your hands. grew quieter & quieter until even the thoughts bouncing in my skull had your voice & intonation & mispronunciations. i am not ready to forgive. i am not ready to let it go. so much pride over never regretting anything in my life, but i regret & i resent the way you’ve torn through my veins. so let’s call it blood letting, bring in the leeches! watch them suck at my flesh the way i sucked yours. let them wrap around my neck the way you wrapped around mine. let the blood pour. let it stream. i cannot hold my muscles so tightly any longer, i have to let them free, toss the ball down the hill. let it roll & come undone. we are done but we are never finished. your breath still hangs over me, still gives me goosebumps. still chastising & demanding. i can feel your eyes like dr. tj eckleburg, always. but you will be the one left floating face down in the pool. haven’t you had enough partying, darling? bullet to the brain, with every inhale i take. you are my greatest mistake. & yours is you too. so is your mother’s. no wonder you wake each day wanting to smother her. go kill your mommy or chop off your own dick or move to india & go completely off grid. i don’t care anymore, nor does anyone who ever loved you. pity yourself & tell the next bitch i’m crazy. & rest easy each night in the empty life you’ve constructed. while you know in your testes, none of those fourteen fucked like i did. snake, weasel, shrew — you’re the whore! rancid to your core & nothing more. good luck, little one, you’ll need it in hell. your curse is dead. & so is your spell.