i don’t wish you the best.

i hope every delusion that holds you together turns so threadbare it can’t even keep you warm at night.

i hope you freeze.

i hope you starve.

i hope joy finds your throat too small, your bowels too immobilized,

i hope you choke on everything you’ve been begging the stars to alight on you,

i hope happiness calcifies in your stomach like a bezoar—

i hope it haunts you like a stone you can’t digest.

i hope you cramp around it like a curse.

i wish i didn’t my feel most powerful with my foot on your neck.

i wish i didn’t want to crush you.

but i think of all the slights that i stuffed down,

all the sabotage i denied,

all the jealousy i ate—

chewed and digested because i thought i deserved it,

somehow,

thought it had all been coming to me

though i had long forgotten why.

i think of the cool composure i stitched together with trembling hands

because i thought it was my duty.

but what was your duty?

what was it you owed to me?