You must’ve misunderstood when I told you to wrap your fingers in my hair, a puppet to your disregard; strung along like a marionette as you pull and play with the strings of my heart. As the hands of the second pirouette round the clock, another string stretches from your hungry fingers, driving me closer towards delusion once more. Or possibly from your greed charged heart beating in my dreams and pumping tears like gasoline. Abundant for once. Cursed words burn at my mouth while a love for the master at play burns brighter in my heart, searing all lingering sense. So tell me Berjerot, when does this lust flaming fire finally settle in the mind of the oppressed? Or is it ‘like calls to like’, Leigh Bardugo? A rapacious soul starved of unfettered attention and a greedy girl on her knees for a care she can’t cover. 

With my singled out, unstrung hand I stretch deep into my pockets, my fingers pushing down towards the bottomless bunch of fabric scrambling for hope, for a gold coin to pay worthiness. I can’t help but foolishly mimic his motions as I pull at my pockets now. My fingers find nothing but space while his find a toy to play with. My fingers fumble to give and his only trample to take. And take. 

The second hand scratches twelve on the clock, and so does the minute hand surpassing midnight. With a modest finale, the hour hand washes over twelve driving dejection that pours like a storm down my face of porcelain content. Darkness wraps me like it always does, but this time holding me tighter so the lightning forks of mascara striking across my face in flashes of black couldn’t be seen. It paints me in darkness, in solitude at the mercy of hands miles and miles away, draining me of breath. Under the hands of once softness, I’m submerged into an ocean of gasoline tears, waiting for the fires burning along my lips and heart to finally set me aflame. 

A drowning marionette, a tragic image of little excitement. But one on fire? And the crowd cheers, throwing roses on stage for the master himself to collect such tangible attention. As the fire of lust consumes my body, burning those tight strings to dust, I squint through the flames watching him bow unscathed and ready to wrap his fingers around the hair of the next. And still, burned at the stake, I should have paid more attention to the spinning second hand, to the days in which he held one string and not me. To the days he danced with me until I danced for him.