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This is the beginning of the end.
I felt it coming when I first caught sight of you
Standing far off in my imagination, tenderly held in the jaws of some impossible giant.
Catastrophizing – a word you taught me without even knowing it.
You are the latest in a long lineage, darling,
which I have strung together by the shakiest threads made of the shakiest daydreams,
taking pieces of the lives of others and my own.
You are the latest rung on my ladder.
I felt it coming like a wave. I thought, “The end is near,
I had better hasten the beginning.”
So I began to strengthen those threads, increase those day dreams,
pester and question and reinforce that rung with steel.
We have never met.
But we will, and I will think, “This is the beginning,”
and I will start to climb.
And then I will think, “This is the end,”
as my fingers make contact with cold hard metal,
and I will continue to climb that ladder while someone stands at the bottom,
destroying rung after rung.