trusting me is fatal.
but you cannot live without me.
so willingly, you pull your bloody heart out of your chest and hand me the still-beating
sacrifice as i stand in mocking triumph upon the temple of blind devotion.
you have some misplaced sense of faith in my supposed love, expect that the sun of my
mind will rise and set with thoughts of you.

you, like the others.
your heart, as those of so many others, has little value; little importance.
it will be another trinket on a transparent glass shelf and if i should run out of space, it
will be another crumpled piece of paper in the metal trash bin.

so what do you feel now?
do you scream angry, anguished screams? or do you cry tears of heavy sorrow?

or do you feel nothing?
your heart, after all, is by now a neighbor to last night’s chinese food and this morning’s
empty cheerios box; sitting in the oversized, black garbage can at the edge of the
iced-over driveway.
have you become emotionless. have you lost all feeling. is that a relief.

do you see now?
see how foolish was your trust; how irrational your unquestioning faith.
i laugh at your hurried love; chuckle at your quick and desperate devotion.
in your mind i existed as the cylinder of platinum-iridium on which you could base your
entire life and yet you have found that your supposed standard is not still the one
kilogram you expected it would always be.
and in my mind, you barely existed at all.

and still there will be others.
others who hand me their hearts and comically attempt to teach me love while they are
unknowing students of Truth.
others who will dream devoted dreams before losing faith and feeling.
and their hearts and yours will share a shallow grave beneath my indifferent feet.