you are an ugly ending to my life

i am loved

The first time you talked to me, I thought you were a boy. I still could have loved you, but I was disappointed because gay marriage still wasn't legal in my state.

It is now, but it doesn't matter because I feel at home in a dress.

My dad would never understand if I brought home a boy and told him that I wanted to be his bride.

Why is my first thought upon meeting someone always their spousal and breeding potential?

You are so much more than that, but I didn't know at the time. I didn't even know your name.

Our names don't fit well together. They're too close together in the alphabet. I wish I could rearrange it.

I want you to change your name because I want you to be happy. I want you to change my name because I never liked mine anyway.

I don't want a name because I don't want the government to watch me.

I want to go off the radar with you and increase the population of the smallest town I've ever loved by negative two.

I could fill out the census with you in six years because I know your name now. Your name is Lyam, or Lyndsey, or Lynsey, or Andrew. Or Lillith.

But why should I care? I don't have a name either.

I was disappointed to find out that the inventor of the Venn diagram was in fact English, and not Norwegian.

I want to travel the world with you.

I want to see what the mountain air tastes like when you exhale it down my throat

in Iceland and Denmark and the Canada.

I don't know the geography of those places very well,

but I am an expert in the topography of your chest.

I razed the fields of soy and grain
and let your harvest go to the locusts

even though a famine had left me barren.

I heard you can cook a slab of salmon in the dishwasher, but you use yours as a drying rack so you can keep your hands dry.

You don't like seafood anyway.

Then why do you so intently eat my flesh?

Once I went fishing in a lake
where the fish were bred to be caught.
I watched the attendant slice one open
while it was still alive.

I held its heart in my hand
about the size of my thumbnail
and poked it with a curious finger.

It beat a few times
and I felt it writhe for blood
but could only gasp for air.

I never thought I would feel such terror and intrigue again

until I held yours in my hand

and choked you lifeless
but not hard enough.

(the rest is improv.)