You have seen what it means to be torn,

a victim in the cage of depression 

You have learnt the language of fear 

like karma coming at you in merciless waves.

Your actions—

what deeds ruined the timeline of hope that once mapped the contours of your destiny ? 

You’ve become the carcass of the betrayed.

Like John the Baptist—

how dare you trust, 

same man of old primordial sin ? 

You have tasted of salt and bile,

shards of your heart scattered like confetti—

same confetti that splayed the bedsheet 

where we first made love.

So what?

You were entangled in the delicate threads of romance,

You were tethered to the nervous precipice day and night,

when it all severed and shrunk.

So what?

You felt your eyelids shrivel in fired tracks of tears,

fears, searing through your quieted peace—

a mirage furling

in once-memories of wandering 

in pine woods and towering boundless horizons

of heightened sensual ecstasies.

It seemed you had burst crazed syncopes in your head

from a flamy love’s combustion.

It seemed, by you, I was forever undone!

At Midnight,

I stand by the edge of the cliff,

my mind veering from its shallow surface

to its dingy crypts.

And in the subterranean silence, 

I leave this Death note —

a love so wicked it would tear worlds apart.