I know why you didn’t bring me around them,

and why the ones I met were uneasy with me.

 

When I looked at them,

I didn’t see nurses,

paramedics,

or working professionals,

I saw children in big peoples’ clothing.

 

My gaze pierced their eyes like a spear,

and infected them with a seed of doubt.

 

It was not about the truth,

or about confidence,

because those were broken concepts

in the dull

and naive

who creates recycled dreams

that Hollywood stuffs down their throat.

 

You should have never walked into the

den of the dragon,

a creature so rare they are thought not to exist,

except at the edge of imaginary maps

or maps made up of imagination,

because I burned any sense of

dumb

easy

life that was possible.

 

You can try to heal the burns by chugging back

so many shots you forget how

your clothing came off,

or by filing yourself up with those

kids in adult clothing,

but the burns never heal and one day

you will be sitting in a chair,

alone,

or with someone you want to run from too,

and a dagger with the force of every

unrequited love

and the pain of all the lost

romances in the history of humanity

will stab you right in the heart.

 

You will remember your brush with

the Good and Evil,

the magnificent and terrifying,

and the one love that never heals.

 

I carved scars to match yours on my

heart and in my mind,

a memento to join every

other

memory of the lost

and the fallen,

a collection of pain and fantasy

somewhere between a dream death

where nobody goes anymore.