To someone in particular, but no one special:

All this time, I gave you power.  Because I believed that you had stolen something from me, something deep and pure and true that I would never know again in my life.

As I pass through these veils of aging, I feel that loss like a wound on my internal organs, and I begin to understand that there was a failing dam long before you erupted into my life.  

I am crumpled and haggard and not who I used to be.

It's so simple to blame things on heartache and infidelity and homewreckers (like you).  It's so easy.

I have fought so hard against the idea that you are a permanent part of my life.  You've moved into my house, put your greasy fingers across the photos on my walls, gobbled my precious food with your mawing fat face.  But you are here, holding up my babies and claiming them as yours.

What's done is done.  You challenge me to meet your pig eyes on your level, but...

There is the sound of a clear ringing bell in the air; it is quiet and strange above the cacophony of this bullshit dream-- but it's ringing, telling me to wake up, telling me to grasp on to what is real and possible, and leave the murk behind.