She reminds me that I’ve got an unquenchable appetite. 

I could take her on. I could fall in love with her. I could send her little letters at the dawn. 

We’ve got nothing in common but bad ideas and an urge to use them. To set them loose and free like little animals that’re going to tear their ways out of our hearts, and rip into our upholstery. 

Yeah, she loves like a needle going in. She pricks me, posions me, makes me ache and writhe and smile like I’ve got something tasty caught between my teeth. 

She soothes me, sucks me, surrounds me with a near-suffocation of idealized beauty. I act like I’m coming onto her, when really I’m just trying to open up. Spread my legs and push me down like a cheap whore in a cheap video game about violence and want. 

She makes me think of lewd personal advertisements. A list of fetishes, followed by an email address. A close-up picture of a pair of lips, or legs in fishnets just slightly crossed. 

There’s a moment, a perfect little moment, where we stare each other down, and feel all full of stupid levels of want. I could tell her what I’m thinking, but I’d rather that she dug in and discovered it all for herself.

I had a vision last night.

The world had fallen to ash, and you were there with me.

You were naked in a pair of underwear; they weren’t your size, they were for somebody much smaller. There was gravel and broken glass between your toes, and the underwear was riding up your ass; you picked at it, as you studied the cloud above.

I had a vision last night, where this city had burned down into rubble. 

I woke up feeling like something important had happened, to me, like I was supposed to remember something that might make a difference. 

I woke up and you were eating pancakes out in the hall. You were dripping syrup down the front of your shirt like you were drunk, or caught in slow-motion. Slow-motion like warm syrup dripping down, first thing in the morning. Watch the amber ball of fluid roll slowly down the front of your shirt; you can pretend it’s not hypnotic, but it sucks your eyes in like a fly falling into amber, trapped perfectly for a billion years.

I had a vision last night. 

You were in it. 

And the whole world was burning.

I’m sorry we had to meet like this; half in secrecy, half in love. I’m sorry we couldn’t have just waded out into the sunshine like soft-eyed children, holding hands and humming softly with religious fervour. 

Instead, we find ourselves here, trapped under a sky that hangs like cement ruins over our heads. The sky is black and cracked with thin lines of grey. The sky appears haunted, and lonely, like a sad man drinking alone to forget his long lost lover. 

The sky does not love you, it only hides the sun.

I’m sorry we had to meet here, in this broken half-a-world. This breeding ground for parasites and ex-boy-and-girlfriends. Sad photos of missing children bloom on the tips of trees; cold-eyed images that flicker in the twilight as though they were going to all run off and play. 

And maybe they did.

I wish it could’ve been a bit nicer when we met; instead it’s raining acid outside, and in here, a dirty digital dust is hanging heavily overtop of everything.

Give me a taste, give me a piece, give me just a little more to get by on… 

She slips into my bed like a knife blade sliding between ribs, like a tongue sliding into a strange and alien mouth. 

She tastes like tomorrow. She fucks like a fire starting on a field of dry grass, like one gust of wind or want and she’ll eat up everything from here to the horizon. 

She’s a starburst, too close to the ground. She melts deserts into glass and melts glass like soft wax, all gummy and sinking into the soil.

Deeper and deeper we sink. Into this, into each other.

She’s a bit of blood on my lips. She’s a fire that starts at the heart, and spreads out. 

And on.

And up. 

She tempted me to get close to her, so I did that thing where right at the last second I revealed a bunch of fangs and totally tore her throat right out. She quivered, like she was getting off on the attention, maybe the attention to detail. She always wanted to live, or die, like somebody really sexy in a really violent movie. Something with a lot of shot-in-the-face moments, maybe a porno that ended a shotgun snuff sequence.

“Girls are my biggest waste of time; they distract me from writing, which I only do to attract girls.” 

She’s half-black and a quarter-robot and twenty-five percent some sort of living mystery. I don’t try to decipher her, because I like the way her coding feels against my consciousness. 

Her hands remind me of weapons, but she’s sweeter than that; she’s as sweet as her coffee and twice as dark around the imagination. 

She knows I want to be her friend; I keep leaving all these hastily scrawled love notes in her bed. She says she feels safe, letting me watch her sleep, because she knows that I’ll fight off any other perverts that want to get in on the view. 

She smiles at me, and when I’m doing blinking, I realize that I’m standing alone in a burning house, in a house that’s burning down. 

I put a hand over my heart, and see if I can feel her absence. 

From across the burning room, I see her smile again. I’m not really lost, I’m just sort of feeling out the edges of the fire in the dark.

Were you write about me? Righting wrongs?

You’re thinking about me; you’re thinking you’d like me; you’re thinking like me.

It’s because my identity is a cyber-sexually transmitted disease. 

My ego is catchy from off the screen, and it’s gonna get on your hands when you’re typing. I’d tell you not to lick your fingers, but you seem like the sort of girl with the sort of insurmountable oral fixation that makes me reach for a wedding ring and the lock of the apartment door.

I wish I was special enough to incur endure your wrath. You looked so beautiful with the bodies of those dead lovers hanging from your lips. 

I want you to think about me because you read about me because I’m not really me, I’m just this idea. An identity that’s always half a truth, a personality that’s always smiling lies. 

I am a viral infection you catch from internet masturbation. I’m imbedded in pornographies, peeking out at from between double penetrations and amidst the gasps of gagging sequences. You say you’re freeze-framing to find my face lost amongst the creamy shots of strangers who seem to lovingly hate each other, but we both know you really just came for the floor show.

We’re not any of us strangers here; we’re just best friends waiting in line to fuck.

Waiting in line to fuck it up, like all my friendships get fucked up.

If I could pick a whole new identity, I’d probably just rewrite this one with better breath and a tendency to spit smokey words like random shots firing off in the night. 

Oh wait. Maybe I did. 

I love being told how lucky I am by my lovers’ fans. 

I’m a jealous sort myself. Jealous of everybody who gets something I don’t. Jealous of every flavour of ice cream that’s not on my cone. 

I’m a sort of something, anyway. 

I’m jealous of them for loving you, and I’m jealous of you for being so loved. 

Yeah, it’s weird to be picked out by the popular girls. I was so busy not trusting them ‘cause they were so pretty and smart, I didn’t even notice as they snuck up around me and got their claws into my agenda. 

And once you forget about me, I’ll burn this city down.

And once you’ve forgotten my name and my home and email address, I’ll show up in the dark and rain, and I’ll ruin something you’ve always loved. I’ll spell our your secret names across the front lawn. 

I’ll say, as the hangman’s noose goes tight around your neck, “I just wanted you to notice me.” And you’ll notice me then, won’t you? Yeah, that knot’ll go tight, and you’ll just about wet your goddamn drawers, turned on and pissed off and ready to fuck or be fucked, but angrily always so goddamn angrily. 

I might be willing to break you, but I don’t know if I can buy all that bullshit you’re blinding me with. Are you really that dirty? Can anybody ever be as true as you say you are? 

She shot from the hip; that’s where a lot of her feminine grace and majesty and mystery spread out from, from the hips. 

She’s noir as the ash of a cigarette. She’s as fetish as the cherry of a cigarette, pressing up against a hot, taut body. She’s as silent as fireworks, she’s as dry as drowning in a waterfall. Falling and falling and-

Wait, what were talking about again?

She hits below the belt; she’s either gonna kick my ass or suck my cock. She breaks my trigger fingers, breaks them off, and uses them for herself. She’s as succulent as a good mistake on a bad day. 

“Fuck that. Fuck you.” Hands full of metal, swimming in blood and sexual fluids. She’s carving her destiny out of living letters, she’s sending me letters and living between the lines. Yeah, she’s mailing me her memories and her meat, letting me see what she looks like between the atoms of air between her and I.

She kicks like a drum beat, and she beats like she’s getting off. 

She’s more distressing than damsel. 
She’s as much a disease of language as she is a dame.  

I have a painful crush on you.

I didn’t see it, until I saw you sitting there. Cross-legged on your bed. I didn’t see it until i saw your abdomen, as you stretched your arms up over your head. 

I have a painful crush on you. It makes me think about cars being turned into scrap metal, maybe with a body hidden in the trunk. Yeah, the metal compresses, and raspberry jam squirts out the back in a fine crimson mist. The high-pitched squeal of metal biting in on itself, as soft human meat is turned into a dirty liquid. 

I have a painful crush on you.

Crushed like the weight of the moon. Some heavy and alien, in orbit. You hang over my head like a noose; a long, slim chord, about to be draped about my neck and drawn taught.

Yeah, if I was any kind of an artist, I’d draw you, taught. 

Yeah, I got this painful crush on you.

And it’s fucking crushing me.

Beautiful Dead-Eyed Doll, comes to life when I touch her, comes alert, like she’s scared of the shock, when the batteries go in. 

She’s scared and quiet and thoughtful. Or she’s empty-headed bliss, well-programmed circuitry blinking like positive drug responses. She lights up, and goes down, heavy headed and weak in the knees.

She threatens to mistake captivity for obedience, like she’s begging to be ignored or raped. She confuses what she can give with what can be taken. She opens up the shining metal chasis that glows white hot beneath her perfect skin.

(Perfect skin, perfectly flawed. Plastic in some places, smooth and sharp, and less so in others. Soft, yielding, full of steel-wool scratches, shot through with the shadows of veins thinner than cobwebs. She’s the colour of everything, anything, in the right sort of light. She’s pink amber blushing. She’s a pale fire in total darkness. She’s smooth dark honey on the bone.)

This beautiful, dead-eyed doll, she holds my hand. She’s lonely and scared and strong. She’s lost her instruction manuels, and sits listening by the window for her master’s voice. 

I’d command her to come, but I love to watch her wait.

She slaps the fire out of my mouth. 

“Get me my tie. We’re going out hunting tonight.”

Yeah, we’re going out hunting. I’m putting on my Alpha Male Armour, and setting it to Charm All Lesbians. I’m going to ruin the targeting on demographics. I’m going to spoil all the endings; spoiled, soiled. 

Grey streets in the rain are melting into black puddles at my feet. I want to say that I can see into forever from here, but she just won’t get out of my goddamn way. 

They don’t like us in this part of town. Their eyes follow us around like anti-tank missels, and their rumours growl at our ankles like mean little puppies. 

She hits me hard, shooting sparks out the sides of my eyes. 

There’s bad times and heavy rainfall coming. Dark days, and darker nights. Pull your hoody up high, pull your cap down low. Hands dug into pockets. Feel yourself growing fierce up inside your coat. Turn those eyes to stone.

She hits me like a load of drugs I’d forgotten I’d swallowed.

I don’t care that you can’t sleep, I just care that you can’t sleep with me.

Really, I don’t mind whose bed I find you in, so long as I can find you. With hands tied behind my back, blind in both eyes, I just need to find you. To find out what you were trying to say when I had that gag in your mouth and that whisper in your ear. 

You find me simplistic; repetitive. On and on again. Over and over again. I tie you up with knots you’ve not tested before. Riddles and ropes to keep you in place.

My place. Yeah, I know my place. You’ve put me on my knees, you’ve dragged me miles behind your horse, out in the fields. I know my place, beside you, behind you, beneath you.

I’ll put my throat wherever you want to lay down your blade.

She’s having conflicts with the police, so I loan her some dynamite and some good mix-tapes, full of the sort of rebellious crap we used to listen to back in the 90’s, when everything was a Vietnam War dream-sequence of hard rockin’ beats and gunfire from strange shrubberies. 

War, children. It’s just a shot away. Just a shot away.

She’s got her life by her teeth now, and she’s running. She’s running like Olympic athletes on drugs, like a big bad deal on the go. Try to convince yourself you can stand against her. Try to tell yourself that as she’s picking bits of you from her teeth.

Rape. Murder. It’s just a shot away. It’s just a shot away.

She puts her hands up against the day like she’s pushing on an invisible glass wall. She pushes, and the day gives way with a soft sort of shrug, like it’s happy for the release. She bends space and time like origami birds softening in the rain. 

Love, children. It’s just a kiss way. Just a kiss away.