Work Text:
In pursuit of sickness
--------------------------------------
Reading about the 80's AIDS crisis makes me sick with grief. Those were my people. Those were my siblings, my brothers and sisters in arms and no one gave a single shit. No one cared. cares.
I would have cared.
Hell, it could have been me.
Listen, I know I go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and pretend. I know am shocked, I know am flustered, I know I'm not like you but listen. Look at me, please. I could have been. I might've even been better off that way. To get it over with. In many, many other lives.
I am, in the little ways, like you.
In the moments I've found solace in the shade. In the private corners of consciousness, comfort and freedom in the unseen. Unburdened by the cool, and clean-cut finality of judgement. Of perception, even. A freedom rarely granted to be my truest and most wicked form of self.
No one can know just how severe. (Thats why I'm here, instead of telling you.)
Or, they can only know so much. Like a riddle, I can be alluded too, but never show my face, what am I? I can only speak in poems, who am I?
But it claws at me, you see. It scratches at my ribcage like it's trying to clean out a pumpkin. I can feel it's glow at the pit of my sternum like a jack 'o lanterns candle, I can feel it burning, burning out of my control.
It yearns, keens, to be known.
It thirsts for blood and indecency.
But it cannot be, too much is at stake.
I have watched others fall from a grace I am so tentatively afforded.
How much do they know?
What have they seen?
What have I said?
What have I done?
I cannot afford to crack against the concrete. No matter how vehemently pulled-taught tendons campaign for its release, or pray silently for relief.
I cannot be like him.
I cannot be like them.
I cannot have it, perhaps it isn't real.
Perhaps it is not for me. Not in the way want it to be.
It is something others get to have, doled out to them like food stamps to cope with a hardship l cannot imagine.
Mind, body and soul; I refuse.
Mind, body and soul; I am too shocked by it.
Mind, body and soul; I am wholly unprepared for it.
Mind, body and soul; does it haunt me ever still.
I could never understand this concept, of "corrupting" someone with indecency. Or why one who perceives themselves as the "corrupted" would crave to commit such an act against those perceived as "Innocent".
Let alone how someone could crave to commit such an act against myself, it came at such a confusing irk.
Perhaps this is due to the lines being so blurred from my perspective. I am repulsed by the title of "innocent" in a way I scarcely understand.
I do not corrupt nor do I seek to be corrupted, as much as I wish to pleasantly surprise any who dare venture deeper into the dark.
I find I crave to be met with equal madness and enthusiasm.
To be answered with unwavering devotion, and a probing curiosity.
To be asked a question, then found willing and able to give an answer.
Woe be upon ye', all who enter here, my dank and twisting cave. Pliant as I may be, do not rush, leave no stone unturned.
You see, If have not scared you yet, you have not found it all.