There are people who get it and people who don’t. I suppose I always got it, but I’m afraid you won’t. I can teach. And teach. And teach. But at the end, I am only a student staring at last year’s lesson plan.

There is truth inside some words and truth inside your heart, so once I tried to hold your hand, but it left me bruised. How could you know that as I weep, I heave, my body a receptacle for every guilty thought I think?

If only to kiss your face and hand you some strength, but the cost is high: a million maybes caught up in my mind. It is a tattered space bathed in the filth of desperation where the beast feeds.

Deep inside a dirty mind is where truth and torment intertwine. That’s where savage beauty resides. But to dig it out, you will first find pride and prejudice, hate and hurt, injury and insolence, and finally, sense of self.

So you battle your demons while others eat Chinese take-out to Talladega Nights. You strip yourself bare and package up the pretty little bits that remain, only to find that all anybody really wanted was a punch-line.

This is mine.