I am a monster.

I look human enough...

don't I?

But I'm not like the rest of you.

I'm just a ghost of a little boy

who was so overwrought that

he became this thing to "survive".

I would have wandered into the

swamps or wastes by now if only I

didn't fall in love with humans so often...

I would have burned myself in sunlight;

drowned myself in holy water -

or hung myself with freedom beads -

were it not for the glimmer in my former

self's sisters' eyes - the laughter in his nephews

visits - the memory of hospital monsters vanquished

before me.

I fall in love with boys; almost always.

Men who see something in the monster worth

saving or worth holding onto...

But none of that really matters now...

Monsters can't survive once they've seen

their own reflections or have been infected

by beauty or joy or love...

And my monstrous body - created by lust,

fashioned by hatred, loss & heartbreak -

My prision,

My prism,

My tower of darkest longing...

My life's blood withers on the vine of my soul.

Nothing can save me...

Or give me solace...

Or die my death for me.

Nothing is what I was meant to be long ago...

Nothing is what I long to be somehow...

Being nothing will redeem me...

In nothing will I be free.