Dear Peter,

Dear Peter,

I woke up today and I thought of you.
Not the way a lover thinks.
Not even the way a ghost thinks.
Just… like a stain.
A film left behind on glass, fogged by breath.

I remember the first time you sat on my bed.
I was nineteen. You were older.
But not older in wisdom.
Just older in hands.

You told me about Pink Floyd.
I told you about Jim Morrison.
You laughed and said Jim was a lunatic.
I said, good.
So am I.

You let me crawl toward you like something rising from a swamp.
My hands were sticky with desire and cough syrup.
I remember my cheek brushed your thigh
and you didn’t flinch.
So I stayed there, like a cat you didn’t want to own.

Was that our love?
Or was it just gravity and guilt playing house with a pack of cigarettes?

You taught me the chords to “Wish You Were Here.”
I pretended not to know it already.
I kept botching it
just so you’d touch my hands
just so you’d lean closer
just so you’d smell my hair and lie to me.

I kissed you once in the kitchen.
You tasted like menthol and stolen nerve.
You said nothing.
I laughed.
But that laugh was a curtain
and behind it, I was already bleeding.

⸻

Now I’m in a white room with tubes up my nose
and fluids in my veins
and nurses who don’t look me in the eye.

I screamed “fuck” when they walked in.
Maybe I meant help.
But the syllables got mangled somewhere between my pride and the Seroquel.

Mom came in crying.
Dad too.
I looked at them and said,
What the fuck are you doing here?

But really,
I was screaming at the ceiling:
Where the fuck are you, Peter?

You who taught me music just to mute me.
You who knew the shape of my back before you knew my name.
You who I let use me
because I was so goddamn lonely
I thought being used was a kind of closeness.

I think about that a lot now.
In this white place.
With the air hissing and beeping like a lazy spaceship.

⸻

Did you ever love me?
Even in a stupid, stunted way?

Or did I just keep giving you pieces of my body
until I had to write this letter
to remember I once had a soul too?

I don’t know.
I don’t need answers.

This letter won’t be mailed.
This is the altar.
This is the grave.
This is the salt circle.

Goodbye, Peter.
You’re not allowed in my white room.

Sincerely,
Leviathan Dean Star Finger
A vampire with lime,
on the edge of becoming light again.