Every word you write is a fragment of you I get back. Every fragment, like shattered glass in the middle of the intersection of X and Y, scrapes the surface of my essence, that intangible mass I call myself, until I bleed pure regret. That blood is my Philosopher’s Stone. I crave it, the feelings it brings, the misery and the sorrow. And you know that. You’ve always known that.

You always knew how twisted I was, far before I did. My first pricks at the skin of my happiness were rebuffed in pathetic attempts to “save me”. That didn’t last long. Soon you let the blood run freely, down my arms and down my body, the regret and the sorrow and the self-pity drowning me.

No one else knows. They can’t, they won’t, and they shouldn’t. You, my knife-twister, pot-stirrer, gut-wrencher, you’ve known since our days of starchy salted popcorn and ink stains on our hands after class. You’ve known from the produce markets of Boston to the ostentatious knickknack-peddlers of Savannah. You’ve known since the day I put on the wedding-cake dress and the funeral shoes and choked myself in the bathroom so that I wouldn’t have to lie when I said I was sick. You knew then, you know now.

I could throw away the ticket. The one I saved, where I wrote the note, where I knew you knew and wanted to seem cutesy and perfect and innocent when in reality I was already mindf***ing you beyond your wildest nightmares. I could untag the pictures, with the crazy eyeliner around my eyes and the half-denial, half-realization in yours. I could forget about Pumpkins and Midnight and Ophelia and the Star of my future that promised not just mine, but ours. I could forget and stop pushing in that knife, stop twisting that knife that I forced you to thrust into my gut. I could let the bleeding be.

But I won’t. You know I’m sick and twisted, and you’ve grown up and moved on and you’re going to let me have that sick and twisted life and you know I’ll never leave it. My nightmare isn’t your dream, it’s your indifference. And really, it’s my dream, isn’t it? The blood drips down and drips and drips and eventually begins to flow in a steady stream of sorrow and hatred and anger and leaves a puddle of crimson conscience on the floor. One day it’ll all be gone, I’ll have no conscience left, and the pain will go away.