It feels selfish to luxuriate in my own desires unless the desire is vengeance. there are people I want dead & today none of them are me. yes, it turns out survival is the engine of shame. The spinning blades that keep the machine high enough to block the sun, never low enough to touch. wide enough to walk into its shadow & disappear. there is a prison guard with his finger on a light switch & there is someone in a cell bending a letter into a single blade of moonlight. there is a child crying over a dog, twitching in the middle of the road & there is a car speeding through a circle of flashing red, dangling from a wire. your own life, a bridge of endings you have made for someone else, until someone makes one for you. then the ropes break. there is a mirror & there is an unreturned text to the friend who died alone. there is a mirror & there is the woman you left standing on a corner in a city beaten by rain. a city that, like you, could not love her back. there is a mirror & there is your fragile heart, which will not let you die today. oh enemy, praise the god who does not give you what you deserve. oh enemy, I love you to death.