Fuck you — in all my lives

   
I got puking drunk    
for the first time in years    
after a run in with a    
street psychic.    
   
I was hiding in the city of saints    
when she hooked my eyes    
with hers,    
took a long drag off    
a cigarillo,    
     
and told me    
without prompting or pay    
I should revel in my pain    
as I kept your soul contract    
     
I caved,    
intrigued.    
   
I’d had one drink    
on my way back to my safehouse    
intent on waking sober    
so I could run at dawn    
     
I handed her    
some money as    
she shuffled a worn pack of    
tarot cards,    
and crushed    
the small cigar in    
plastic green ashtray.    
     
I joked if you and I    
had a soul contract,    
that shit was in default    
and someone was getting    
their balls    
repossessed.    
     
And then I stopped joking.    
     
     
She never looked at the cards.    
     
She never fucking    
looked at the cards.    
     
Not once.    
     
I’d glance down and see shit like    
Lovers and Fool and a tower and death    
cards with cups and swords    
but she turned them over    
to stab my eyes again    
with her pupuls    
     
as she said before    
we ever agreed    
to exist    
the fundamental we    
that has existed in all time    
before time,  
   
our incorporeal beings,  
   
agreed to do this    
     
this.    
     
so you’d heal.    
     
She had on dirty orange Crocs  
and told futures from a fucking    
card table on a street corner    
that smelled like piss,    
and she had the balls to say    
     
I am the great lesson    
from the universe to correct    
all the shit that you keep    
fucking up    
for us in    
every    
single    
life    
     
She said    
we knew it    
   
we knew it    
the moment we met.    
   
Knew we were us    
in every known universe    
and my skin crawled    
when she said    
   
‘you couldn’t have    
expected    
each other’    
     
I dropped my eyes for a moment,    
she swept the cards into a pile    
and took my hand,    
not to read my palm    
but to pet the top gently,    
offering comfort on some    
doomsday bullshit    
     
I was yours in a last life.    
and you are mine in the next    
   
and    
somehow    
you keep fucking it up    
     
the stars and the fates    
and alternate universes have    
all finally pointed    
your face to that fact    
     
I really was the    
goddamn one.    
for you.    
     
I really was torn from your    
rib and created to match    
in every place but    
     
here.    
     
every when but    
     
now.    
     
so I’m the great    
firstborn lamb to    
sacrifice for the gods.    
And, allegedly    
   
you’ll never escape    
this loss in this time    
   
I’m supposed to love you enough    
to be the fucking lesson    
     
Oh    
     
….    
     
     
Fuck that.    
     
Fuck all that.    
   
As much as you’ve    
lied to my in this life,    
I feel like your future self                    
can hard-fuck a cactus    
regardless of life cycles    
and soul contracts    
     
I overtipped her and    
got drunk enough    
alone    
in a strange city    
that the only good fortune    
of the night was that    
I didn’t end up    
at the bottom    
of the river or    
tied up in a    
skin-collectors    
basement    
     
I don’t want to live this life    
without you    
   
and I don’t want you    
     
You suck    
past my capacity    
to accept you    
as a human  
worthy of me    
in any time    
     
I sure as fuck don’t want to throw    
myself on some grand universal    
sword so you can get better.    
     
So    
you…    
   
Why the fuck is it always you    
   
She told me.    
If I loved you.    
I’d be the lesson.    
     
I hung over a toilet    
later that night,    
slightly amazed    
at how much draft beer    
tastes the same    
both ways    
and tried to keep my    
hair clean as the    
dry heaves hit    
     
I don’t believe    
in that sort of bullshit    
but if I did,    
   
Motherfucker    
if I did    
   
I’d slit my next-life throat    
before I’d let her    
near you    
   
I’d smother future    
you as an    
infant,    
so that I’d live    
in a clean world    
   
I’d hang myself with    
a stranger’s belt    
in broad daylight    
right the fuck now    
so I’d never risk    
rebirth    
in a time    
you existed    
     
Leaving you to your pain    
this life gives you    
peace now    
   
and joy in the next.    
     
it breaks your patterns.    
   
(the patterns I saw)    
   
fuck that.    
   
Just fuck all of that.    
   
and fuck you.    
     
I get nothing from this    
and you’ve left me nothing    
of you to crave    
in any age or era    
     
I flushed the toilet    
and crawled to the sink    
to rinse my face    
and brush my teeth    
world spinning    
unsure of which way    
was up    
unsure if maybe    
sleeping on the floor    
would be a better idea    
than moving    
   
Unsure of a lot    
But sure of the fucking truth    
   
No fucking charlatan    
is going to feed me    
horse shit    
and call it cheesecake    
   
I know the truth.    
     
I know the fucking truth.    
     
   
There’s nothing    
after this for us.    
     
   
   
In any life.