To Veniamin
-----------

My silver-bladed muse--beautiful to behold, torturous to touch--you are my lover and my nemesis, the soft hand on my cheek and the splintered bullet in my heart.
I want to kill you; I want to die at your hands.
I want to forget you, and I want to remember you most of all, even as everything else fades.
I'll never stop loving you, but I can't stop hurting you; and every tear you shed is another I'll never be able to cry, because everything good in me withers just a little more each time I make you suffer.
We are matter and antimatter, dearest; forever seeking our counterparts, but never meant to meet him--on pain of destruction.
But I can't bear forcing farewells upon you any more.
If you would still have me, so be it...
Find a time, choose a place, and let oblivion come as it may.