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their wrists hold stiffly upright, never flap like wings.
They do not spin. I would weep for them if it were not
for the certainty that they do not feel guilt for it
and you whispering that heart is wasted on enemies.

You. With you they say my life is chaos, they say
that your pleasures are temptations, apples that, once eaten,
will make me into cyborg or angel, will make unto me
armor against the world, a shell. If you are an apple I will grab
you right off the tree, devor, gorge, lick clean the juices
and roll on the grass. I relish my spine of gleaming metal,
my mithril hair blowing in the wind, my fingernails of eye-

burning
light, my six wings. If you have made me an angel
or a monster, it is because I am that which I choose to be,
and you make me what I am.
My life is chaos? How else should a life be but chaos?
Why would anyone
want a world quantifiable, every experience laboratory clean,
factory-standard, counted, not a single strand out of place?

No, no, no, you are so beautiful that you scare everyone
who wants to control you. You are so powerful that you terrify

all
who want to wipe clean life of all its undignified messes,
its impure delights. You are that which cannot be stopped,
you are repeat-after-everyone, you are no-need-for-words,
you are objects-in-a-line, quietly, on a cool surface.
You are order, you are chaos, you are electric words
like stim and echolalia,
words that hum and buzz
and loll around on the tongue. You are all that I would ever

want,
you are the ink that has long since seeped through all the

pages,
as long as my staircases of blood. You are me, and I am you.

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