Vampires

Cloaked in silence,
sitting, hunched in a deep quiet corner of my own body
Holding the thought and desire for touch:
a small purple glass ball,
although it is a wary venture.

Not a single one of you are ready to hear this,
you don’t care to know.
As much as you preach your own understanding,
as much as you derive your own metaphors,
as much as you find your own symbols
learn things about your own lives.
You are not ready.
there is nothing that could have
set you up
to be prepared for
this:

You are all vampires.

I wish that it could all be simple,
that these words were fair and giving
that they did not have to be recurring
loops of my own problems written forever
immortalized in digital format or ink,

“Your poet” is selfish
“your musician” is selfish
“your artist” is selfish

just like you,
somehow
I, We, Us
are no different than you
as you
peel back the ache from your eyes
like skinning an orange,
slicing an apple: the flesh is dripping,
and
suck the soul out of everything you touch.

I wish you knew
how much you killed me every day for you,
how much I killed me every day for you.