It was one of those issues
that hangs about like a specter,
running his chill breath down
the nape of your neck
when you least want him around.
We never exorcised him,
never used the bell, book, and candle
of reason and conversation
to excommunicate him from our relationship.
You, however, chose to ignore him,
in reality only feeding him
with your psychic mental energies
that you seemed to believe
were devoted to the well-being
of both yourself and me.
But now he rises above both of us,
above what we are and
what there is between us and
forcing himself between us,
and it seems that although spirits
may pass through walls
nothing can pass through them.

And now I've brought your attention
to him these past days, you suddenly
are aware of him, and it has hit you like
the cliché ton of bricks, bricks of lies and
depression settling over your essence.
And my god, this hurts me the most of all,
seeing you bowed and broken under this
weight of circumstance and consequence,
humbled and wounded by your own doing.
I would cry, but my tears have long since
been depleted for you. And the ghoul seizes
my throat, stoking my anger with the guilt
of something I had nothing to do with,
strengthening my resolve that this weight
was forged by you lying to yourself, tested
in the fiery firmness of your resolve for pretending
there was nothing wrong, nothing, nothing,
like the nothing that has implanted its hollow
self inside my ribs, and it's quite amazing
how much substance that nothing has,
choking the words of apology and amends
that I would make, my Germany to your Britain,
except I would mean all the concessions I swear
just to actually end this once and for all.

But I can't.

I can't apologize, no, not after this,
we have to face down our demon
and rip his smirking smarmy head off
because otherwise he will keep returning,
I will be bowed and broken, humbled and wounded,
and nothing will have changed.
He will be there, biding his time and
binding our hearts, squeezed to oblivion.

And I'd cry, but my tears have long since
been depleted for you. The only reason I
know of emotion is the hollow emptiness
in my chest, where my heart should be,
and I know there should be something there
but it has long since been sacrificed
to you..