folie a deux

FOLIE A DUEX :: madness of two . . . a shared delusion or psychosis between two people in close association ☆
she gave me a sketchbook, the first two pages were stained with her heart, four short stanzas declaring i was the sun to her moon. all i could see was a sea of me. i hungered for her love, disregarded the girl underneath. she held up a mirror which featured my drooling complexion. i licked my lips, feeding on how she perceived me. fueled by the need to be her better, by that dark sticky pit inside me that insisted i must outdo my own reflection.
the way she loved me made me forget who i had been, who i continued to be. tricked into worshipping the me she created in her mirror of love. she had us both convinced of my divinity. i drank up my own celestial imagery. any thoughts i had of her were about how she imagined me. i cared only for my visage, the interpretation of my person. i became deistic, her obsession, a voyeuristic feast. i competed with her as i would myself, trying to rise the pedestal in her mind to heights no one but me could reach. i measured my worth against this angelic version of myself we created.
dreadfully codependent. i leaned on her for acceptance while she pined for a love that could not come from me. we were deranged, soaked in delirium, believing we could stay so close when she felt as deeply as the ocean and i was still shivering and fearful on the shore.

i did something she thinks i regret. i confessed. madness spilled from my lips and he lapped it up as a man dying of thirst in the desert. a delusion she thought was meant for her alone. her image of me changed. the eyes that used to watch me with devotion now seemed to scorn. my face was no longer framed with that golden halo she clung to. during those last few months together i could not muster the courage to look at her. our memories became as fuzzy as her body in my peripherals. i felt her loathing seeping out toward me since the moment she realized i was in love with someone else.

truth is: i never had any real interest in her at all. i can see that now. i treated her like a loyal dog, she said this was the reason she pulled away when i tried to kiss her, but i know it was because i could never love her back.

i think of you now and my mind floods with a bloody feast. i do not think you deserve to be eaten, my fantasy is a selfish one; devouring the illusion of my perfect self. i care to much for my own ego. i can’t have it changing so i really wish i could have eaten you before the mirror shattered. your taste would only be bitter now. do you crave the past as i do? do you salivate at the thought of competing in everything? i became immeasurably depressed when you snapped our string of madness. thinking of you always makes me sick in the head. i‘m still chasing after your loose threads, the chapped lips of my best man and his closest friend. you’ve turned seductress. the innocent girl who loved me vanished, transformed into the woman she imagined herself to be. her bones are buried in my backyard. she mixes and mingles with all the other girls who’ve piled up in my mass grave, carved out by a hunger for vanity. i keep a contract to stay blind to my fears. i am the only one who can understand me.

i am mad so you must be too. and when you begin to escape i will have to eat you. i will feast in envy and agony to preserve my divinity, and swallow the madness of two.