I am working.
Leaking into this cafe
Is a stench so horrid even the brewed beans cannot briskly wipe the slate clean
Like cutting board and knife
You chop up a recipe your mother wrote that you claim to be your own.
You lessen the world around you when your own lies spew from your gorging jugular
You slit into his life like a clawed cat
When in reality
You gently scratched your signature on this waiver
As did I
We knew
Exactly
What was there
Queens puffed out their chest and sang with their souls into the bellows of the cave you waltzed upon
You gave genocide a positive outlook
You made masochists optimistic
You knew
Exactly
How it was there
You take your sleeve and roll it up tight till it chokes the skin above your elbow
squinting at the sharpie scrawled across your arm
The cheat sheet
The answers
The rhymes and rhythms of someone else's hardships twisted into your own beautiful profit
It is not beautiful
Being in pain is not beautiful
I don't write because I want to
I write because I must
I do not plaster a tattoo on the base of my forehead screaming "Me: and not another".
I simply confide myself to my own journal
That is subtly secluded to the side corner of my chapter
I am in asterisks,
Where only the faint of heart can travel to see.
If, in fact, you have swallowed this piece, or
Enjoyed this meal:
Know that it was your own doing.
I didn't ask you to see this.
I did not place your name tag on this collar.
It could be anyone
from anywhere
with any mouth to run.
The frame of your nose shoved itself into my direction
I am frustrated
With the noise
That is this conversation that still has not ended
Close your mouth
Close your eyes
And realize
that there is more to life than the IV bag that is your lost lover.
He is not hydrating.
He needs the water for himself.
Let the poor man rest,
For we have stabbed him past the point of murder.
Forgive me.
Scribing is not a sin,
for we have all written what we are too cowardly to say.
-Vivi
