but i won't probably get very far

you say never say never, because never's a damn long time. you say life is a funny thing, has a funny way about it, space and time.

(you. that is to say, they. you're supposed to say they, aren't you? and they say all these hackneyed things, folk wisdom, generic scripts. they say, when they don't really care. who would? it's not exactly interesting, grip-riveting, theatre of the mind and the world.)

but ask yourself, if it were you, if you were the empty shell, if you were the lifeless and the broken, the unbegotten and the forgotten, because you didn't have the brains about you to try, wouldn't you run, too?

wouldn't you walk away, forever and ever? wouldn't you start, like you never had, trying?

we walked away from us, which is to say that i walked, and you followed, because i told you to, all those years. i told you to go away and you just kept coming back, because you had the righteous pity not to leave a limping thing alone like that.

i told you what to do. i always told you what to do. i always tried to call the shots, bigger than i was in boots and britches all.

i was the head honcho. i was running this show. i was the dean of every session. i was the force in every room.

i wouldn't let a damn disputation's soul tell what was best, what was ought and really and i think you should.

i was right. i always right. more than i ever thought i could be prepared for.

i was foolish. deeper even than a fool.

but eventually you got better, got stronger, stopped stumping yourself. eventually you saw around the corner. you couldn't see it coming fast enough, to get you away, and i don't blame you, because i can't blame you. not just because i shouldn't, and i won't.

because i'm a good man. not that kind of a good man; oh, no, i'm a weakling, a pussy, a putz. no prostate. no balls.

i'm good enough, though. i was. for a time, too long a time, when all you needed was good enough. and then i faltered, fumbled, failed.

a defamatory battle between the weirdo with no friends except for the weirdo with all of the friends, and the very ding-a-ling on the other end of the line.

you deserve better respect, you do. that's why you went and got it, and everything, and more.

but i can't fathom being the one to bestow it upon you, because i don't deserve it - how could i ever have it, to give?

i couldn't, not when i never gave you a goddamn thing. altogether, all i did was speed you down and slow you up so that you came out just the same pace as if i'd never existed.

already dead. a mess on the floor. wild slaughtered wolves and knives in chests.

it should have been me. it should have been me.