I will always be attracted to someone like you. At the same time I will be repelled by your inadequacies, your humanness. I sit down to write, though, and I only think of you, you who is a reflection of me, a human, yet never completely like me because you are human. How can I ask you to be perfect?

If you stood in front of me right now, I would consume you like a can of soft drink, sucked dry and discarded. You would only provide temporary relief from my thirst and then I would want another. I consume you now, burning my thoughts of you to fuel the writing machine within my head.

You have lived a thousand years in one moment. You blinked your eyes and Rome fell. In one heartbeat, your children gave birth to a hundred generations. Yet . . . yet, yet, yet . . . yet you have one life to share with me, one life of remorse and forgiveness, regrets and love, a life filled with pain unbearable to look at. I want to have all of your pain, not because I want to relieve your burdens but to squeeze them in my hand and watch stories drip out one by one. I am mad with desire.

And don’t think you can run away from me. Once I have reached you, and you know I have, you will always cart me along with you like a monkey on your back. I won’t weigh you down but you will feel my presence all the same. You’ll cringe your neck muscles every time my hot breath creeps down you like a tentacle, feeling for a limb or appendage to grasp. You’ll relax your muscles when I whisper in your ear that I love you. You will love me and hate me.

I never worry about losing you because you are always there for me. Your name is different this time but I don’t care. You will give me what I want – a fleeting moment of humanity – and then I reduce you and our relationship to mere words. Don’t underestimate the humility of words, either. If you think you can escape unscathed then you have not lived. After all, life is painful.

I never lose you but I will miss you when I have used you and our shared moment of humanity is gone. Even now, I sense the emptiness inside of me swell up and beg for escape. I have to fill the emptiness or I have no choice but to die. I will not allow myself to die so I must take a part of you.

I cannot allow myself to live. Other people deserve to live their lives without fear of people like me, a leech.

“I believe we’ll have to commit him indefinitely this time,” the examining doctor told her. “He seems unable to separate fantasy from reality.”

“Can you snap him out of this? He still has moments where he seems normal.”

“Only time will tell.”

Time stands still at the corner, waiting for the bus. Cliché walks up and asks how long Time has been waiting. “Seems like forever,” he says, shaking his head. Cliché decides to walk on, he has had enough of the watered down years of standing on street corners and telling tall tales.

In the end, we’re all clichés for living.

I cannot help myself. I reject you with one sweep of my hand because I can never have you. I have nothing and hate myself for thinking any different. I am but a collection of entropy states swirling together.