Prose from Now

You want me here, as a pet. As a ragdoll. You do not notice I contain no love for you. That I have been emptied. You hold my arms up, impel me to act the part, with no heart.

No matter. Your mind vaults over my matters; if you can get me to stay, to be your warmth, your pet, your love, then you are proven faultless. A victor over cruel reality. The hero wins the love of the princess, hidden in her pauper's garb.

The possession of a fair and smiling slave proves the Master's worth,
    even as she shudders under the pull of her iron shackles, and turns to spit, vomiting her au gratis meal,
                                                revealed to be sand.

A rabbit in a snare baited by need; I cry at your feet, at the hopeless entanglement of your infant's love.











image: "Trapped" by Sybille Sterk

Prose from Today

I am not sane.
I am thinking of locking myself in a box.
A clear box.
A box in which I am naked, and alone.
Being exposed is fine,
   as long as no one can touch me. No one can talk to me.

Stop calling me.

Stop persuading me.

I can trust no one, and why?
Simply because no one else cares for me.
           I care for me.
Other people construe their right, their right to expand their boundary
     of care for self, overstepping their line and mine, to beg for my self-care.
As if they had none.
But they have some, and want more.

What is the middle, besides a constant struggle,
    to care,
    to not care,

    to move closer,
    to move away?
This thought isn't sane; sane people don't think about this.

The clockwork of the brain,
                        driving me insane.

My suffering is in thought, it's in my head, but without my head,

                                       
                                                                                              I am, again, stranded on a sea
                                                                                                of other people's ambitions.

This Thing Here

This thing here,
It's not a repository.
Not receptive,
Not in or out or anywhere near
Love.

You are warned
as a human loving
To stay away.