I've got so much to ask you
 It's never the time
Why would I
Spoil a perfect evening?

It hurts, but it doesn't bruise.  I don't bruise.  Not much.  No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try.  Try to bruise, try to apologize, try to be ashamed.  Try to be sorry.  And I am, in some ways.  I'm sorry for how I've warped your life.  I'm sorry for all I took you away from, I'm sorry for all I complicated, I'm sorry for all I damaged.


We've gotten this far
On being polite

 You have no idea how beautiful you are.  You may never.  Just as you may never know how badly I've wounded everything you are, how irreparably I cripple everything I touch.  Just as you may never know how sorry I am for all of it.


Besides
I know you're proud of me

You may never know that I'm not sorry.  Sorry for hurting you, yes.  Sorry for putting a fracture in your beauty that may never go away.  Sorry for upsetting the line, the road, the path, that should have taken you where you wanted to be.  Sorry for making you think that I could give you fairy tales, could give you happily ever after, could give you a princess or a goddess or even a human.


When I was made
Did they leave out a part?
Did you know this, and choose to guard the secret?

I'm not sorry for who I am.  I wish I was sorry.  I SHOULD be sorry.  But it's not the same thing.  At some level, I am too much in love with this horror.  I hesitate to type it, I delete it, my stomach turns - that indicates to me that it is right, that I must set it down.  If my body rebels, it is true as the truth can be.


You said 'everybody's born
With a beautiful heart.'
What was wrong with hers?
Why did you leave it?

I should be sorry that there's something wrong with me, that I'm too emotional, too reactionary, too vulnerable, too dangerous.  I should be sorry that I scare you - not angry that you can't take it.  I should be considerate, be thoughtful, remember that I am not in my right mind, am rarely in my right mind, cannot make decisions this way, cannot make statements this way.  As I promised myself.  I should be ashamed of the way my skin splits over my knuckles.  Instead of sorry that I didn't bleed more.  Instead of sorry that I won't bruise.


If I start to cry
I may not stop.

  It hurts.  I punched a tree tonight, again.  Badly.  Hard as I could, over and over.  But my body has learned.  It doesn't send blood to those hands anymore.  It doesn't try to heal them right away.  I don't bruise.  I never bruise.  Hickeys, yes.  But no bruises.  Just like when I was a teenager... none of it means anything, because there are no bruises.


Love runs dry...
I run off.

I'm sorry for everything I do to you.  The truth is that I should be kept away from people, from people like you.  From exactly the kind of people I love.  Because you are too perfect, too valuable, too important to place in my hands.  Perhaps Katrina knew years ago what it has taken me till now to realize: I must be kept away from good people.  I damage them.  I love them... and then I damage them.  The road to hell, et cetera.  It's a cliche.  It's all a cliche.


Can you help me with this heart
Inside my chest?


It's all a cliche, it's all been done, it's all been played.  We're all such terribly self-absorbed people.  We want so badly to be different, to be special, even in our self-abnegation.  But there is no way on this earth to obliterate the ego that has not been tried before.  And every single attempt, by definition, is an enhancement to that very ego.  God... so insufferable.  Trust me, I hear this tone in my voice.  I know how bad it is, and I'm closer to it.  I have to live with it every day.


It ain't perfect
But you should see me use it.

Maybe that's why this.  Because there is no dinh.  There is no answer.  There is no one better than you, no one wiser than you, no one infallible who can ever tell you with perfect certainty what you should do and whom you should be.  Every soul who has ever attempted to give you counsel has doubted, has sinned, has wept, has wanted to kill themselves.  They have all had moments of weakness in which they were more selfish, more helpless, more useless than you will ever know.  No one is worthy of respect.  Which means that everyone is.


But it only works
When I've made a mess
When it looks like
I'm about to lose it.

I'm sorry.  I'm sorry every single day for everything I've done.  To you, Aidan - for everything I have even begun to do to you, and for the future and everything I will do to warp and harm everything you are, everything I find beautiful about you.  Because that is how it happens.  As much as I would give almost anything to worship at your feet - as much as I am dying, every single moment, to set down my burdens and be helpless at your hand, more than you can ever know - I can't.  I want to, and I can't.  And I'm sorry for that too.  You deserve everything from me.  You are more than I ever expected to find in this world.  I wish that I could be everything you need.


If I start to cry
I may not stop.
Love runs dry...
And I run off. 


To you, B, for everything I promised you and have never delivered.  May never.  I should tell you that I'm not the person I promised you that I would be.  I don't know that I will ever be.  All I can ever give you is the knowledge that I wanted to be - that for you I would have given everything in the world to become what you deserve, and that you deserve more than I have ever given you or ever will.  I am so sorry for what I've done to you, for how I've tormented and twisted you.  You are so utterly perfect - there has never been anything wrong with you.  I promise.  I swear to god.  You are the greatest gift I have ever been given.  I only wish that I could ever have had a prayer of being worthy of it.

Yeah, I'm just like my mother
Yeah.  I'm just like my mother.
And if you don't love her...
What does that mean about me?


To you whom I love and cannot name - because your names sting my tongue, because the weight on my shoulders of everything I have done to hinder or harm you silences me.  And I'm sorry for that too.  God - there was a time when I didn't know guilt or regret.  When I could not think of a thing I'd done in the world that I was ashamed of.  But you know what I think?  I think maybe... maybe that was my way of dealing with the fact that I had never done a single thing in my life that I wasn't ashamed of.

If I start to cry
I may not stop.
I want to know why
I run off.

I wish I could think of anything productive I've ever had or done that I haven't subsequently proceeded to royally fuck up.  But there isn't anything.  Any skill or power I've ever had, I've wasted.  Any opportunity I've ever been given, I've squandered.  Any gift I've ever been lucky enough to receive, I've proved unworthy of.  So I'm sorry for that too.  I'm sorry for not being what I should have been - for any of you, ever, in any way.

I want to know why
I'm like this.
I want to know why.

I go wild
'Cause you break me open
Wild
'Cause you left me here
I go wild

Shaking.  Shaking, shaking with need.  Everything in me is loose of its mooring, everything is snapping in a high wind, apt at any moment to catch you in the eye, strike weals onto your skin... or mine.  I am too irreverent, too selfish, too controlling to ever live as someone else's slave, to ever make kneeling a way of life... but at moments like this, I want to.  Not for the reasons I once did, in extremity, aching to surrender my burdens, no.  But because... god, it's hard to put into words even here, in this garden, in this silence, where I have always been painfully honest.

Wild because the chips are down
Wild because there isn't anybody else around
Wild when the waves start to break
And god, it's breaking in me now

Because this week has been so strange, so devastating in its quiet way.  Because each day I wake feeling like every smile, every movement, every word I say is a shivering skin over a howling hell, a kind of reactive, twitching madness like I haven't felt since I was a teenager.  I remember becoming fixated upon an empty picture-frame, the way it tugged at my eye and mind, irresistible and endlessly empty.  I remember weeping for the love of people who didn't exist.  I remember this - I haven't the word for it.  It feels like wrath, roaring and nonspecific, casting around for the nearest target.  It feels like joy, the kind that makes you scream.  It feels like hatred, deadly particular.

Wild because it doesn't make sense
For me to cry out in my own defense
Wild because I would do anything
To tear you off your precious fence.

I remember how badly I wanted to hit the tree, and how badly it hurt.  I remember the relentless, clear-eyed rage that made me not want to stop.  I remember the choked sounds, cut-short screams, when I did it.  I remember how the waves subsided for a moment, how for a moment there was just pain, simple and clean, easy to sob out and wash away.  How the tide kept coming back as the pain died down... and how I beat it away with my fists again.

So this is what it's like living in limbo
First I'm high, then I'm solo
I go wild
'Cause you break me open, wild
'Cause you left me here
I go wild 'cause your promises are broken
Wild when I know you're near

Like Cu Chulainn fighting the sea, beating the tides back.  I wish I could say I was ashamed.  I wish I could say that I walked back home thinking how stupid I was, thinking how it was over and it didn't need to happen again.  I didn't.  I walked back home with my hand trembling uncontrollably, unable to make a fist, and I felt sated, satisfied.  I felt quiet inside, in control.

Tell me what you've come for
Moving like a hunter through my back door
Leaving the perfume of all you adore
To die nameless on my floor

Is it self-destructive to know that something's wrong with you and not have any desire to fix it?  Is it self-destructive to have a problem and not want to talk about it?  I've spent so many years struggling with myself, stamping out inappropriate impulses and reactions, teaching myself to be rational and reasonable to a very fault, refusing to permit jealousy and self-absorption and resentment to breed within me.  And now I'm... bored.

Yeah well, we both know that you don't play fair
I guess you really think that you get me there
Let's be honest, perhaps this little ride
Is too much for even you to bear.

I'm bored with controlling myself.  I'm bored with behaving myself.  I'm bored with attempting to measure up, I'm bored with allowing others to call the tune and set the standards, and I'm bored with trying to solve problems before they arise.  I want to drink whiskey, punch trees, write and sing and kneel at your feet.  I want to do as I'm told and be proud of what I do for the first time in my life.

You've got a lot of nerve to come back here.
You're not the only one who can smell fear.

So give me orders, and I'll fulfill them.  Force me to my knees and I'll be happy there.  Praise me for my efforts and I'll try harder.  Be good to me and I'll be yours.  I've always known that no one rules a man like his perfect slave.  If you know it too... if you repay my obedience with devotion, there's no limit to what I will do for you.