i lie awake in dreams unable to sleep in the moment i know will pass. still, the moment i’m yet to be is a parasite to what i once always believed i was. in all my days and all my years, never before has the fear crept in so sexy and suave, coiled up around my naked frame and whispered sweet condolences in the form of forgotten friends and ever-dying kin. and yet, here in the year of my lord who is somehow willing to forgive, in this absence of pleasure around my mouth, i crumple out the same words used by our fathers and our fathers’ fathers. dry and chapped are the lips of forgiveness, a kiss i no longer desire to steal. the delicate faces of pleasure and beauty have grown raw and forlorn behind crimson shades drawn with age and haste; these two whom i once believed twins and was utterly disgusted at their incestuous farce, i now recognize as lawful separation due, in part, to diagnosis of a disjointed nature. it occurs to me, of course, now later than before, that my role within this masturbatory fling is to latch as a leech and gorge myself on the dying whims of a once future dream.