you told me that you still have me to take care of,
that morning when i’m sitting in the library

you’ve just woken up, and what have i done already today?
yesterday i was amongst friends and today i’m a killer

that’s right -- i guess i’m giving you permission to call me that.

…

i’m not a good person, is that what we’re getting at here?
because if you want me to (or if you want me to and don’t want me to know that you want me to) i will say it.
and tell you that i have never been good, despite that i’m funny
and say that i am certain you will meet more interesting people whose tongues aren’t knives,
who know how to talk to people that they’re not secretly or not-secretly trying to hurt.

i could say, the way you’re already thinking in your head, that i’m not good enough to stay around for.
and i don’t want to be the only reason you do.
if all else fails, and you have to do it, then i’ll have failed, and we’ll both be dead lovers--
it won’t matter because we’ll both be dead.
just like how it doesn’t matter who’s good or bad once they’re underground, we’re all underground, love, you just don’t want to admit it because you don’t like to admit things.
except that you’re killing me, us, whomever comes near

after everything else ends, and i’m still fixing my hair,
i’ll apologize and we’ll do our dance again,
where you say you love me and i say it back
after all, we both mean it -- it’s just that sometimes i don’t feel it and you don’t feel it

i want a perpetual sign over my head that’s apologizing and loving you at the same time
don’t mix this up with me apologizing for loving you,
rather apologizing that i, in my relentless nature, continue to exist
for you, for nothing else but that…that’s a way to live, they call it a different name -- dependence? i like to be strung in the air like wet clothes.

tell me what you really mean to say.
(though i’m hiding from you. even now, two years after i died for the first time and you hadn’t existed.)
say something familiar -- that my eyes look like bulging alien eyes. tell me that it’s okay that i am a bad person. say that i’m a person, listen to the way that my grammar deteriorates and rots.
i exist for you, you exist for me, we exist, undying, eternal.
take care of me if that keeps you alive, darling. take care of me if that keeps you alive.