Elegy

I lie to my ideal self.
I tell him I will be like him tomorrow.
Transparently, these are dilatory tactics,
to keep him at bay, silent.

Why should he have my life
so like a tattered rope,
when he lives in an ideal world
of perfect spheres, unbuffeted?

After all, he can only come to exist
through shaming me into opening the door
and letting him steal my one poor life.
Let the parasite perish on the other side of the soap bubble

he rode in on.