I Saw My Old Lover Today

Many years had slipped my mind,

And I walked a lonely path;

Wandering sidewalk streets unkind,

It's a fool who serves his wrath.

How long had she been waiting for me in that room? Did she search her soul to find my weakest point? Or was it simple dumb luck at this low point to open the door and see her staring into me?

Of these questions I never got an answer.

Her arms were outstretched towards me, thick green moss hanging down in dread. Had she not moved since our painful parting?

She started towards me mired in clutching disgrace. "Help me! Woe are my woes! I'm rotting without you! Can't you see?"

She hoped to bring me into her world of hurt; an illusory cure. She sees me with stars in her eyes, dreaming of a future that can never be.

Years in the making was this; wallowing in atrophy and false gods of desire. She said she would track me until the end of her time. She spoke of broken love and our lost scenes of life. She must grapple with thee once more with her scaly skin.

She had been brooding in the dark; unkempt, swallowing sorrow in contempt of life. She left a trail of shiny slime as she moved which then turned black with ugly scent. These things I were to find attractive in the cavernous echoes of her helplessly wishful mind, to "prove" the uselessness of life without me.

"I don't care if you hate me or ignore me forever and ever, I know you still love me!"

No point in pleading my case. Her mind fixated on me alone, parsed from the entirety of the universe, I was the key. We had to be. She will sloth behind me along my trail, daring me to rest knowing I have found no home of my own. I can never be safe until I do. Why did I ever let this creature in the door? How could I have been so blind as to her clawing crippled clutches?

But how to reason with the unreasonable? To show love is suicide, to encourage the creature's wrath. But to rebuff it kept alive the unobtainable fantasy of an Absolute Answer to her woes. She dances with dreams of deception, needing a partner for an eternal twisted tango. Will I ever be free?

"Save me! By my life I have been swamped!"