Imagine Me

To the world, she is formidable.

To me?

She is the world.

To the world, she is formidable.
To me?
She is the world.

And then, even though I know it’s going to piss him off, I say to Nazeera:
“Warner and J were engaged.”

“That sounds awful.”

“What does it feel like?”

“I was thinking about how much I love you,”

“You’re not even going to pretend it’s not true?” I rip open a foil container. More potatoes. “You won’t even pretend you don’t know that the entire world finds you attractive?”

“Was that a confession?”

“You wish, dickhead.”

I look up. She’s smiling.

Ugh, so pretty.

Haider pulls a machete from somewhere inside the bloodied chain mail he’s wearing under his coat, and tosses it to Warner, who drops the machine gun and catches the blade by the hilt without even looking.
A fucking machete

Our bruised bodies still careen through the air. We continue to hurl ourselves at promises. There is madness in the repetition, in the repetition, in the repetition that underscores our lives. It is only in the desperate seconds before death that we realize the windows against which we broke our bodies were only mirrors, all along