I Don't Want

Alone, alone and some would say alone again. Alone is normally who I am, normally what I want to be. But no longer. I crave human comfort, and there is no one by my side. I have been, I have had.

There is a mirror. A long mirror. It hangs in my room, taunts me with shallow promises and glimmers of light. I treasured it once, not so long ago. I held it above all my other possessions, because it showed me promise. It showed me the future I longed to have, a future which lies in ruins. Everything lies in ruins now; everything that surrounds me is a burning wreck. I tasted love, and it was sweet and viscous on my tongue. I begged it to sing to me, and it did, and it sang lies, beautiful lies, rich and embroidered as a fine tapestry, lies woven out of sugar and gold and malice. And I believed the lies. Believed I could love like any other man, believed that my lover was a prize to be won.

I am not weak, and I won him. I made him believe I could give him all he wanted, and all he needed, and more. I made him love me, and I think perhaps I even loved him too. If I could love. If I wasn't so blinded by selfishness and contempt.

I don't need anyone now, loneliness robes me in a cloak of shadows, and I rather think it suits me. The mirror says I look old before my time, gaunt and colourless as bones bleached in the mid-day sun, as pale and gleamless as my hair, but then the mirror is the greatest liar of them all. He is only as deep as his thin, glassy surface, a fair-weather friend. The weather is foul and stormy now, and only now does he tell the truth, and kicks me when I am down, and lie only with agony and sorrow as bedfellows.

He fled, you know, fled in the mirror of the night. He couldn't handle my rages, my insatiable hunger to destroy. He was fragile, and needed protection, and I was cold and cruel and merciless. He gave me himself, and at one time he would have given every single drop of his blood to save me. I ruined that, though, and I ruined him too. I broke him and spoiled him, like I broke and spoiled the toys of my childhood. He left in hatred and betrayal, left to curl up on his own, away from the world, and lick the wounds I inflicted on him, lick the wounds he never could have deserved.

I don't want him back.

I loved him.

He was weak.

I loved him.

He was spineless.

I loved him.

He wanted too much from me.

I loved him.

He was fragile.

I loved him.

He was tender.

I loved him.

He loved me.

I treated him like filth.

I loved him.

I hated him.

I loved him.

I don't want.

But I want.