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When you walked by with him it caught me off guard. I thought you had moved out of the neighborhood. I honestly didn’t even care about him. I was simply upset at the fact that you were close again. Never left I guess. Did you look in? Did you see me? Did you see me see you? Maybe even staring out of the side of your eyes so as not to draw attention to the moment, up and to the left, just over the freshly cut hilled lawn in front of my candle lit window. I’m glad you saw the grass that way. A nice, clean, mowed down version of my living arrangements.

I drank you. I drank the poison from the cup you delivered to my quenched lips. I was a fool for you, and fooled. Damnit. I never said the words to you, but I felt it. I surely did. I wonder if you even came close. And I will never know. And it doesn’t matter either.

Matter of time, matter of time. It had happened before, remember? Running. I called you by your name as we crossed in opposite directions, like a silly metaphor, and you stopped. I wanted to hug you, but couldn’t reach that far. You stood so far from me. Remember that? I don’t know why I felt, and somewhat still feel that way about you. All you did was make me sick with your poison shots, jabs, pricks, pokes, punches, mashed up words of death, all hurled at me over my castle walls like a fire engulfed catapult launch. You broke my defenses, and got inside. I could barely fend you off. I was a dead man. A dead, man.

But the sun rose. It rose with a bluish tint, and it flooded my eyes. I was alive. Rested and rousted from your poisonous sleep. Molting back into a new skin, a skin that was fresh, and familiar. You can have the scraps. You can have the empty bottle you wedged down my throat, emptying the liquid of your derision.

I was the fool. I am a stranger now. Built in the memories of your own mind. You will not live in mine.

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