I can’t make you love me. Evidence says that’s a lie. 

I am using what I have seen in humans to mimic them. Widened eyes in that red hare-stare with a puerile, tilting head and a disgusting curiosity of instinctive humanity. Evidence says that I am successful. Evidence says that if I am determined to bend my spine in a bow with a smile and a honey-tongue and blink big bashful baby blues then I can pass enough for human, for one, for us – evidence says I do it well enough to unfurl the freight-train and leave me a rabbit on the tracks, scarlet shade of every ghost. The berry on top is to drink like cracked glass and spill enough to appear vulnerable without being such, pretend my skin split like an overripe peach’s seam cleft in twain/cleft together; let me beguile from the absence of liquid and life inside; I’m scratching at the door please let me in please let me in please let me in oh god let me in and if I see it open I will bolt like a hooker in mass like the deer in the woods and only, if only, I glanced back at that porous door I would have seen the claw marks that I left as evidence of my effort to scrabble at the handle and have it catch. I can’t make you love me/I make you love me/you love me/I can’t love.

Children who experienced emotional neglect daydream excessively about revenge; even the docile dream of new blooms and soft meat, tongues and hearts riven red akin to a stagger punch-drunk home through dawn – they have a glint in their eyes. I, vengeful, want to split you open like the peach, feel you splinter and shard like cracked clay – and even in these fantasies, the judgement-free indulgences in my head subject to the prying eyes of nothing and no-one, I cannot kill you with my hands. I don’t know if I want to. I no longer want to taste ashen apologies in the tender tabernacle between my tongue and my teeth. I feel like I could dive right into your arms/I feel like I could right you/I lie to you/I feel cold in your arms/I feel you/I lie.

I wish I knew how to cry to one thing at once