When I hear tell of you with my name in your mouth, rolling it around as if you know the taste - I would rather die than have you experience that flavor. we’ve been on opposing sides of a legendary battle that you may not recall - on your long road of retribution-imagined, throughout history and outside of time. I remember the tuck of your smile from ages past, on bright winter mornings, you and I cabin-bound, just our breathing in syncopation and the snow-covered roof crying music into metal pots. I know the furrow of your brow as your mind works feverishly, sharpening knives, conjuring foils for hunting - the misery of those long dark nights with you at that whet-stone for hours until a blade was thin with one purpose. And me at your side like I had been for centuries - warming my hands over the fire and working your shoulders like Sisyphus - as if my strength was enough to roll the fury from your muscles - something born in your bones and carried through time and bigger than each world we’d lived. there was inevitable clarity - moments I’d become immune to the contagion of your mania. The times I’d learned i was not a partner but your pig to sacrifice - to stew and sup and nourish you. to be the diamond in your eye that sparks this imaginary revolution against the ghosts buried in your skin - reaching from each follicle, growing wire-strong and humming a minor key before the push of your Wagnerian catastrophe. And when I chose to fall, I fell toward you, onto your weapon and the sure solace of death - tricking you into thinking you’d won, as if that were ever the point- watched your gaze glaze divinely before leaving you for the first of too many times. So now, to hear your poison passing through our mutual channels again, to know you, your evolution cuckolded - to know you miss my dumb cow eyes, the sway of my meat - I grin hard, hard enough to cut glass. I’m not afraid of your rise, your knife. not afraid of your bite - your impotence bastes my memories. I’ve gulped mouthfuls of that bitterness just to live an extra day. I learn the hard way but you never learn. Come closer now and you’ll see what I’ve been cooking.