Toxicity

You aver to me your fidelity

“I’d never cheat”

Oh I don’t doubt that

You love me as your one and only

As your parasitic partner

I haven’t the privilege to leave

Nor to peel you off of my arm

Only to tend and to nourish

Till the point where you suck me empty.

You simple creature

Quarrelsome wife whom I refuse to live with

You won’t catch me on the roof

For I will get away, far far away

Your love I might sense

And even be softened from time to time

But I am no filter

I don’t tolerate lukewarm

You are either in or you are out

100% or nothing at all

I will either accept or reject your entirety

It is not in my nature to absorb half

And keep out the other half of ugly residue

Yet all along it is I in the folly

Rebuking the splatters on your face

While I drown in my own mawkish tears

Me, the spoiled daughter of a noble lord and lady,

I demand that my dolls obey

Or I rip out their cotton stuffings

They, the attendants of my tea party

Ought to please the will of their hostess

Your love is pure in flecks, muddied in others

Mine is the rose in the Beast’s garden

One whose thorns prick if you dare to step out of the line

Now, which is better, which is worse?

And which is utterly toxic?