january 12th 2024

we were in an uber on the way back from a concert out by where the celtics play. we’d left early—not a quarter of the set complete by the time we elbowed our way to the tail of the crowd, and on our way out i took a seat on the stairs by the entrance as you clambered to the front of the line for lowertown merch, the opener, the reason we’d gone. but my feet hurt bad and the high schoolers in the crowd cut us glances like aliens. now in the car, you said, can i tell you something? and i probably said, yeah, whatever, so you said, i’ve thought about this for some time, and i think that i’d kill someone if you asked me to. i said, are you serious? and you said, i’m serious, i’ve never been more sure. and then we made it back to campus, took our pilgrimage to the max, beyond burger with cheese, motherfucker, and we pulled up bones on your laptop.

we were somewhere on the sidewalk when you changed your mind. march—i bet it was march, a year of a month—you said, i wouldn’t do it. i said, what is it? and you said, i wouldn’t kill, not if you asked. i wouldn’t do it. and it was such a piece of shit idea, you with a knife, and why would i want that, who would it be? but that had been your confession of love. it could’ve been the very first. all the others were desperate pleas for god to hear you, to offer me up as a herald, heaven’s message that you deserved to exist. your confession of love: you would follow me until our star imploded. now you said, we have died, it is done. 

i never feared you, never once, until you thrashed like an animal that had been shot and ripped the faucet off the common room sink and brought it down over a light fixture nailed to the wall. i think you could kill in an instant. you’d have to be out of your mind—but i think you could kill if your body allowed. 

people often wonder why i wouldn’t let you go. it happened like this: the love you had for me was like nothing else i’d ever seen before in my life, in this reality or in fiction. i’d been raised with an absence of patience and attention and i believed, until i met you, that this was the fate i was bound to, my supernatural punishment. your love was blind devotion, a knight swearing an oath by a sword, kissing the tops of my fingers like a gentle prayer. for me you waited—only i had ever waited. in your company i tasted a place and a time where i was safe to surrender, to be vulnerable rather than strong. now you see: to lose that by your hands that had loved me is torture. to return to the first square is a special kind of death. i cannot be loveless again. i am too romantic. 

maybe i wouldn’t have killed for you, but damn, i would’ve died if you said so—and look at me now, this state i’m in, maybe doing just that. if you said, stake your heart, i’d drive it through as long as you’d look at me until it was done, and you’d finish off my corpse like you promised. if i die you come with me, why won’t you come with me? straight ahead on the street, you’ve never known me in your life. who am i, what are you, where are you going? next time you pass i won’t snatch your hand, i won’t stand in your way but i’ll say, fuck you, and i hope everyone hears it. i’ll get in your head because you’ve been clawing at mine and i’ve never been someone to settle for suffering alone. down with the ship. kill me, kill you. die, die, die.