You meant the world to me once,

but I never really owned up--

except in that badly written note I almost

wished I'd fed to a goat.

 

I may have browsed your new profile by mistake,

making out from pixelled shadows

a back-lit halo and your

kinky grin of fallen angel.

 

I used to watch, smitten,

as you handled by the edges,

those inky polaroids,

taken without my consent--

our heads crudely painted out --

all for the good of art, you said.

 

I was your Eve, but you turned me cruelly.

I became a serpent on legs

eager to slink beneath your thick skin--

but I never did find out if you were rotten to the core.

 

How I hungered to feel your pulse quicken

against the fleshy coils of my measured death-clinch--

but I spared you in the end,

let you go back to that settled life.

 

I'm down to the very last relic--

a stranded shimmer of unplayable tape,

hooked into a figure of eight.

But no doubt I'll see you in my dreams--

a paler version, standing just the other side

of the golden mean,

your pencil raised in admiration

of my serpentine line.