it begins with an ache.
definitely an ache.
somewhere inside you
you don't know where
the back of your teeth
your feet
your eyes
an ache.

you can be happy. you can feel all the pulses of
life within you, matching rhythm with the world.
you can feel everything continue forever
like the ocean
the mountains
the blanket of night
while inside you, remains an ache.

you can feel bigger than everything
bigger than everyone
see their hopes and dreams
their fears and failures
their shame.

and you hold their beating hearts in between the edges of your teeth
so alive and delicate and vital
demanding of it
the urge to bite down primal but irrelevant

and they'll show you everything
show you the blood and sores and abandoned rooms
the sweat
the terror
the everything and anything so much bigger and blacker
with their hands inside of them
even in the calm of their voice you can hear
the nighttime anxieties like stones rattling inside glass bottles
they'll show you everything and still swear they don't believe in it.

they'll see the blood on your hands and they won't believe you did it.
you'll tell them that you've torn it out, you've torn it all out
every last bit that seethed inside them
spreading infinite emptiness
you tell them it's magic. real magic. not the stuff of unicorns and rainbows.
but the things that men go to war over when
the women stoically hold it between cool fingertips
just waiting for someone to ask the right question.
and they won't believe you
because they're so terrified of the blood they may find on their hands.
and that makes you ashamed of their blood on yours.

and throughout all this
it's the ache. the ache that accompanies you
the ache that has always been there for you
the ache who has never failed you.
it is the ache that cries out into the night
using darkness to reach out for familiar hands
the ache searches for its own.
the ache uses you.
the ache renews you.
the ache can only find an equal.

but the ache is never more vindictive
than when it fears seeing behind a person's mask
and finding emptiness
a lack
a void
an impenetrable stranger

the ache fears death.
the ache fears that it has pulsed and beat and
longed for its own echo
where never an echo has existed.