And you begged that I would pierce you in kind, gouge your body, cut you, find the green stink in your gut and bring it into the air, the light, astound you with pain, rip your deepest layers of muscle, make you feel the curious interstices and gradations of pain that arise when wounds are made wider, or deeper, or are hollowed out from beneath.

Angel, monster, I would not do these things to you; I only wanted that you would dig me bloody; I itched deliriously; I would not cut you, rip you, much to your dismay and torment, because I so loved to see how you begged me, and when you did so, in screams, my pleasure increased a millionfold.

I am certain we met in the past. I am not certain. In that year great news was being made in the world; there were successes in social and foreign policy; I wanted so badly to be flayed by you, wretched darling; I was astounded at havingfound you; I wanted to continue this nightmare always; you tore at medaily; my face was in pieces, was mustard yellow, green, purple, bluish,all colors, all over; I wanted always to save these colors; wanted toswallow each of your heartstopping blows and see every day how they bloomedfrom beneath my skin.

I am your starveling, your trash; in the morning you wake to the ferrous scent of my blood trickling across your face, into your eye and nose; you lick at it, and suddenly you are up, beginning to dig at my navel, tearing the flesh upward, you howl at me that I am bad, I am terrible, I am always in error, I should be different, I should spill your blood more, destroy you further, blackest spider; you burn away my nerves and my sense that I am myself with your horrific abuse; my veins fill with ammonia, naphtha; I am chilled and deliciously paralyzed, my cruel arbiter of joy. You bellow at the brown and red juice foaming from my stomach as you separate with the strength of your hands the two halves of my belly; you dig my gut, ruining my wet gelatine organs, pulling from me my steaming velvet ropes of intestine, painting your arms, your chest, with my glossy blood as I scream horrified. If only this ecstasy were happiness, my most exquisite humiliator, demon, sadist, ass.

Long ago, when I was just as lonely, my mother made me in her gut out of warm blood and sugar; I became myself there; I could not change. I fed and grew with the blind diligence of everything alive and became myself; I formed; you cannot change me now, my horror, though I can die, though you have flayed me many times, pummeled me, despised and detested me, pierced my most delicate organs until I screamed so long, so hard, that blood sprayed from my throat and I fainted in astonished pleasure.

You say you want me any other way, warmonger, simpleton; you say you're going to remake me. You can't see that's impossible, but no one can tell you otherwise, my venomous despicable love; I accept your terms; I know only you, your acute, circular unhappiness and nothing else; I revel in our nightmare, I give my organs for you to smash; I bleed and erupt vomit; I refuse to flay you and this is my greatest pleasure, second only to receiving your fantastically sustained torture; I will not hurt you; I cannot; I am paralyzed; you scream in terrible, hideous frustration, livid creature, at which point I dissolve in joy.

Before, when I knew only her, I ran crying, running in circles after my lost mother who had thrown me out of her
house, who had sent me away, alone. I know you, she said. You're weak. You'll try to stay here forever but you can't. You can't hide here anymore, she said. Go outside, or you'll die of your own weakness and fear. Leave, she said. And don't go grieving for your mother. She hated herself.

After she had thrown me out, I hurled myself in the sand at her, screaming, I hate you, I'm not just weak, there are other things, why can't you see me, I hate you.

Then, after a time, my heart closed, sewed itself beautifully: the work of silkworms. After all, I was young and my body worked flawlessly. My body was perfect and perfectly self-contained. Then, I stopped howling for her each night. Then, I never dreamed of her again.

But I blamed her for bringing me where I never wanted to go; I woke up one day and I was already formed; it was too late; I was a child belonging to my mother; I wanted that my blood would reverse, return to her, but it was much too late; you, flagrant savage, were already there, reminding me of this, blowing a great heaving wind into my mouth, exploding my sinuses and nose from the inside, bursting my eustachian tubes, my cochlea, my eardrums; you were entering my eyeballs with your fingers, bursting them, watching them liquefy and run down my face with ribbons of blood as I licked your wrist weakly; you were delivering to me your heavenly guerrilla blows until I fainted repeatedly, my creature so absolutely alive, my joy; it was always your astute sense of courtesy, your sensitivity, to wait just long enough before resuming your protracted attacks so I could remember who I was, my ceaselessly offending terror, my dearest; I die this instant, hearing your execrable insults, my ecstasy a monsoon.

In your deepest dreams, twisted sibling, you are dog, orangutan, howling, starving for my blows, begging for my ravenous bite. I act only on impulse, anger, not calculation; I tear you into pain without warning, I use knives, blades; you want this; pain splits your body into fragments of mirror, making you multitudes, unmaking you into many selves, each that hurt distinctly; you become a fly's eye, perceiving the world not in waves of light but in throbs of pain, throughout, I am starving, my unnamable one, then gorged on your blood; my body is ceaselessly and forever punctured, broken, by your unspeakable violence.

In your dreams, beautiful one, you have opened yourself to me in excitement, tremor; you spread your ass for my pummeling fist; my fingers, coated already with your sticky blood, rip your colon as you whimper, then yell; your bile swirls and enters you, beginning its slow poison of your bloodstream, angel; I am covered with sweat; you begin to faint; with a deeper shove, I reach through the hot, thick strata for your heart, which you want me to lick, chew, mash into a useless cud and push down your throat with my saliva as you take your final breath, my repellent sweet.

But I will not do this for you, sweetheart, not even as a favor, and so you are forever tormented. I will never give you this gift, I cannot; it would ruin our nightmare and my acute, stinging pleasure; yet how can I deny you the pleasure of flaying me, precious, I will not do that; so in this way, I want what you want. Whatever you want.

This year, the papers say that the nation's economy is strong and that there are more high-paying jobs than ever; I am advocate of, accomplice to our nightmare, constantly desiring our wretched delight; feeling every day some new timbre of agony; today, you prepare me to hold a whip; you open my palm with your adorable hand; you close it around the whip; you lie before me, chest rising; you whine as I hold it, test it; yet it would be a shame to use it, dearest; surely there's another way to make you suffer; I drop the whip, laugh at your excitement, then in an astounding rage, you grab it and whirl; the whip cracks on my head; my broken hair flies like sparks shooting from a fire; I spit on you repeatedly; yapping, you lash me; my saliva runs down your face; your look of outrage makes me flush, moan in terror; in my fear I have lost control; I hold onto the table, my body twisting; you drop the whip and seize my body, darling, groaning, fisting my throat, my esophagus, a hemorrhage is beginning; light from the window enters my eyes as I gag; I wet your arm with vomit and blood; I bite it, scrape it with my canines; I reach and twist at your genitals until tears fill your eyes and spill; my tubes have burst; your arm stuffs my throat, your fingers jab at the valve of my stomach, my acid burns you horribly, you will blister, fester, dearest child; I have lost my body; my body is thin, narrow as a membrane; I am too thin to contain organs; suddenly I balloon, I am hugeous, my body fills the room, fills the blackness I see before me, my dearest, my joy, the blackness you have delivered to me with this pain. This cannot continue, it's too much; but it will only continue, my dearest, and if my outrage and ecstasy were happiness, lover, demon, it would be mine to give to you, only you, in endless, unstoppable proportions. But I can only look to you, my horror, hellcat, hideous queen: I am certain that once, in the past, we met; I am not certain we ever did.