And what will I tell them all

In the end? When my hands are tied

Like shoe strings

Double knots, and not a nimble finger left

In all the Western world?

Will I say “forgive us, we are just like you”?

Will I say “forgive me, I am not like you at all”?

I do not know how to tell you what I love

You are not convincible.

You do not love me, you do not know

My love-- so deep that nothing left can grow

Save creatures with no breath,

Without sunlight

No kith nor kin save the ones like me

Who have grown fangs

Whose faces glow brighter

Than the Las Vegas strip

Would you dive into me? Head first, arms posed

Above your head like a pyramid, a pinnacle?

Would you exhale into my blood? Would you wear

My skin, a thin jacket against the cold of the swollen

Universe, whose womb rocks and wanes until

You are simply dust in the hands of angels?

Waiting, waiting, waiting on the pendulum to drop?

You do not know my fear

But you will.

You do not know my hunger

But you will.

You do not know my hands

But you will.

Put my head beneath the water, I will learn to breathe.

Put my hands beneath my thighs, I will touch without fingers.

Put my eyelids closed like doors, I will see in perfect darkness.

Drop it in the ocean in the end.

Call it curtains.

Call it whatever you like.

I am the dark thing that changes, you are the monster that does not.