Shivering against my shoulder
at the bus stop
on a dreary Sunday, you remind me
to be kind.

I don’t want to be kind.
I want to ruin your life.

So the light is fading. So your
father never loved you. So you
left the tap running and now
the floorboards are damp. So
your entire life has been a series of minor humiliations. So
grief arrived. So grief stayed.
So the only girl you really loved
told her friends you were bad at sex.
So what?
I could hurt you worse if you let me.

They tell me deep sea fish are
nightmarish creatures. Lamps on
their heads, eyes bigger than their
bodies, translucent skin that flakes
off onto the ocean floor. I could be
that for you. I could do that to you.
We could both crawl across the
underbelly of the universe
and do what it takes to survive.

I want to ruin your life. I want
you to be primordial, screeching. I want to unearth
the graveyards of you, candle light
falling into a coffin — I want to undo every death you’ve died.
I want you to become
entirely unlovable and
I want to love you then.