Ragged edges of something - if not once beautiful, then - at least deserves the description of 'lovely'. Separated we are perfectly fine, two distinct separate wholes. Together and there are explosions, loud and shattering not in the way of sudden bombs, but so much more subtle. It is in the ways of assassins' knives slipping past all protective ribs and sliding right between them where a vulnerable spot is. It is the execution, and the implications that it took the skills, the prior knowledge, for this type of stuff to work.

It is the way words are not so much flung towards each other in babbles of incoherent mess in the heat of a moment as the way words are aimed, coolly and coldly, oh-so calculating with the perfect force, precision, and accuracy, every word, every pause and every punctuation meaning not to kill but to torture, to whittle someone down so superciliously with deliberateness, the harm with the sharpness of an assassins' blade and the deadliness of little more than paper cuts to keep someone alive just so this farce could be repeated.

It is the almost ridiculousness of the whole situation, the glaring and cutting silence of the frigid cold war that follows. The way that, despite everything, the two of us still stubbornly cohabit under the same moon and within the same country, standing on the same few familiar tiles within the very same apartment. It is laughable how stupid we are, how mad we are in all the possible ways.

Don't you know we are just that? Mutually Assured Destruction to both of us and so much more for those caught in between, the unknowing collateral damage. Some days I just want to claw out your face and your eyes, neatly-trimmed nails tearing down the paper-thin veneer that we both know you hold, and to peer deep within the very abyss of our dark, dark soul.

We have fallen already, don't you know?

Separate we are fine, still wholes and definitely still complete. Together, though, we can be so much more, more and –

Didn't someone teach you not to be so greedy?

We should really just let go.

(But we don't.)