
icarus was alone, alone, alone || a.s.
Because the villain knows that without the hero to hate, his life would be empty. Once he’s murdered his adversary, he’s alone.
In my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep.
He licked his lips. “Well, if you want my opinion–”
“I don’t,” she said. “I have my own.”

from “sometimes i wish i felt the side effects” by Danez Smith, Poetry Magazine March 2018
I like the feel of you. I like the noises you make. I love your faults. I love your voice. I love your truth. The world bores me to death (or rather my world does) – it bores me and irritates me when I’m away from you.
Tell me a story about wolves;
I know how they go, all of them,
wolf dies, wolf is cut open,
wolf is bone and wolf is blood
and wolf is villain, always villain,
and wolf is starving.I am starving.
No. No. Wolf is starving.
Tell me this:
the wolf always loses.
There is never a story
where the wolf wins.
Tell me this.
Tell me over and over again, so I stop
eyeing your throat,
so I can twine my fingers together
instead of reaching for yours, I am hungry,
help me, I am hungry,
chain me, I am hungry.
I know how the story goes:
wolf is chained, wolf wears lamb-skin,
wolf is threat and wolf is dead—
if wolf is no threat, wolf lives on,
starving.Tell me this.
Say:
Darling girl, put your lambskin on,
rear up on your hind legs.
Teach yourself to have a human tongue.
Forget the woods. Forget the taste
of blood on your tongue, oh!
Your bones are the spires of Stockholm
and it’s a lovely city to die in.
Close your windows, girl,
and forget the way the moon sounds,
like a metaphor, like the death of metaphors.
Be human. It’s easier.
Once upon a time there was a girl, and a wolf,
and only the girl lived.
Whatever other story there might be is lost.Lost.
Lost.
Lost.
We know Lilith ate
the bones of her enemies. We know
a bitch learns to love her own ghost.— Erika L. Sánchez, from “All of Us,” published in Poem-a-Day