and there in my heart is still love, ugly and mistreated and malnourished with jagged edges and hard seams, it is still love, a wretched stone that pushes my belly out in lonely protuberance. I drown it in beer and wine and sometimes gin and whiskey. I wash it, but it never becomes beautiful, it never is a joy. I’ve wondered what I must look like to it – a ghastly beast incapable of handling a pearl of love, with rabid eyes and a shameful bloom of a nose, craven misshapen hands grasping at the hems of whores’ skirts like a lost little toddler searching for the mother that abandoned him. I was beautiful once, too, stone in my chest. I was once a pearl of love to behold. I suppose the slow death of the body came in compromises as much as this filthy stone love was depreciated through the same compromises.
corruption in all forms afflicts the love in my being, my own, others – it is of little import to cast aspersions upon pawns in the universe. what greatness lost in fumbling egos and suicidal selfishness? and yet it must be, egos and selfishness perverting the purity of love. it must be as gravity must be; as stars are born and are beautiful and dim and die.
and i want to dim and die, having loved and loved again, ad infinitum, so that now i am dense and solid and ready to explode or burn out. I am too tired for more, though my heart beats with hammers and pistons and steam and energy that is not me or mine, i do not want it anymore.