the needle tears a hole; the old familiar sting
—nine inch nails
For years and years I have told my lies
Both with my tongue and with my silences
Because I could not bear to have Truth set you free.
It would not set me free; it is the Truth that binds me
In a fine web of golden thread.
I dare not call it love, for love is bright
And this is not; something darker, perhaps—
Black passion. It twists my dreams
And poisons all my waking moments. The thought of you
Is enough to make me shiver with all the fine-honed longing
That the sight of your face brings to me.
The needle slides into my arm; no more insidiously
Than love of you slid into me. You hold
My cold stone heart within your hands, and
Where your fingers touch me, I burn.
The craving for you is no stronger than for drugs:
Cocaine, my dream, my one true friend:
Guarding the black places within my soul
Its saving is the more, for the destroying of me.
Its surge is not so strong as the want of you.
Lonely, I wander at night, staring out of windows,
Feeling as cold as the moon that shines unheedingly,
And hot as the red flames that lick within the hearth.
A love that is not shared is greater peril
Than the edge of a cliff, and as high and fearful.
When the roar of water drowns out my thoughts, my friend,
Nevertheless a single shred lingers, remains.
It is of your face. And with memory of you in my mind,
And remembrance of your ignorance of my hurt—
Despair is not so cold, after all, at that.