The interlude.

A frugal existence entails neither loss nor relinquishment, instead it adheres to a primitive duty we call necessity. 

The physical, tangible needs we labeled as water and food – those are necessities – but here we are, all puckered up like ripe plumps in the hellscape we call home, gently massaging a credit card. 

But I just uttered a lie, a mantra twisting in the ear as the manilla loops around your eager fingers. 

All I ask is that you repeat it back, repeat the urge I sense through the narrow tissue arching through your show curtain, regressing without apprehension into the floral pillowcase I breathe in. 

Yet, no, you’d say, I’m high enough already. 

In spite of your thrifty nature – anxiously tapping the smart chip embedded in a plastic case to the industrial piggybank – the pattern ceases in contact with ripe flesh and bone. 

Your terminator is the natural eve of the chained realm, and it eats you alive, like a bunny rabbit hungry for sacrifice and yearning for sanctuary far, far away (where the gods sift impurities from the air.) 

Fine, then turn your creasing brow away and let me subscribe to the belief you hold oh so fucking dearly.

You heard me right, or did you? I’ll manage, appeasing those selfish joys you call necessities, appeasing a side of you I shall no longer call home.