I had him cornered—I had him boxed in like some wounded, deranged little creature standing in the face of some great wolf licking his chops, daydreaming about the taste of rabbit flesh and red-hot blood (on his tongue). I saw how he breathed; I watched how his eyes rolled; I listened to how he stammered, how he groped for something in his head that slipped passed his grasp and out his mouth anyway (I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying—)—

--and I touched him there, where I had before—leaving a mark of blood on him, oops, didn’t mean to do that, I wasn’t trying to mark him a beast like that, like I was bathing him in the blood of a violence I had caused from him—

(--well fuck there’s an irony there that I wasn’t paying attention to--)

He was answering me; well, honestly he was answering a couple of questions all at once. I don't know, he was saying to me. I don’t know. I walk and I talk and I fight when I’m called but I don’t know why and that explains a hell of a lot more shit than one might realize.

Something was still burning in me and the hate was morphing and I wasn’t able to hold onto it—to direct it where I wanted it to go, to be useful instead of some seething mass in me just…smoldering there, toxic and dumb. I didn’t want his I don’t knows (I DIDN’T WANT HIS I DON’T KNOWS!!) because there were babies sobbing in a meadow and a woman who had thought I had come there to kill her and I wasn’t gonna stand there and allow the reason for all that to be I don’t know--

--but it…it slipped.

I slipped.

I…I, uh.

He…

He did a thing I wasn’t expecting.

He did a thing I didn’t want.

But he was looking at me, seeing the blood on my lip—and the heaviness around us suspended in a thick cloud and a thunderstorm and we were in the eye of it and everything froze because he was—

--he was touching me again, his lips knocking into my cheek and into the trail of tears there and he was speaking into my skin You’re crying and he was noticing my tears—

--(again)—

--and he was speaking against me, his breath hot against my ears as said You’re injured, noticing the red on my lip—the scars on my body—

--(again)—

--and…and everything just…

..it all fell, man.

Like, I just…I…

…I couldn’t do it.

My body was aching and it was exhausted and it was done and so hurt, so hurt with things that had been whirling inside me, slicing me from the inside while the rest of the world poked me on the outside—and there was a my Ma and there was the glacial words that were spoken in her stead, those words she didn’t have the guts to say to my face—and there had been an invasion and the tears of children at my feet and the insanity of a mare who had lost so much in my face—and there were sleepless nights tucked under my skin with hungry days latched beneath my chin and your worry spinning in my gut, spinning in a circle that danced at the heels of red, smiling eyes--

--and someone was touching me, and noticing the blood on my lip.

…and I suck.

I should’ve killed him.

(I don’t know why those babies were crying--)

I should’ve slit his throat and we’d all be happier for it.

(I don’t know why I act the way I do but I do it anyway because why the fuck
not--)

I should’ve been the strength in this equation to do what was supposed to be done.

…but I couldn’t. He cared about me.

And…fuck if I didn’t care about him, too.

And I remembered—I remembered when I hated myself in that crystal cavern, and how I blasted the place apart in my anguish (I don’t know what I’m supposed to be--) and how he had stood there and let me be a wild, aimless storm—

--and how he had been there anyway, when I was done, crumbled on the floor, to hold me in place while I smashed apart—

--and how it was after that that could tell him why I cried.

…so.

He touched me and I melted and crumbled because I guess I ain’t shit.

But he touched me there, on my cheek, his lips brushing my tears and I—I rushed at him, my head swinging over his neck to grab at him, to pull him toward me so he could shatter against me like I had shattered against him and maybe I could find a way to press those piece of him together hard enough so they’d stick—

--and my tongue was swelling and it’s probably for the best because I don’t know what I would say (we fucking suck, oh god we fucking suck) because I wanted to hate him, I almost, almost wish he had ended up being a monster that I could attack and try and demand some weird type of justice by his shed blood—

--but he wasn’t any of that. He was some guy I cared too much about—who cared about me more than an entire herd of innocents, who cared enough to see the blood on my lip instead of asking why are we fighting--

--fuck, but I suck at this balance, thing.

"talk"