In the woods by the lake

When Hozier said, "imagine being loved by me".

You move mindlessly and with every step a ripple of thoughts reach me.

I have never known someone as unknown as you and curiosity burns through me. 

A wretched darkness to humanity, I feel it in me, 

the need to get under your skin, the need to see you undone.

 I slip through the trees and watch you watch the sky so numbly.

And I know something about you isn't human, 

I know it from the way my hair raises with your every breath and the way I can feel your longing 

and your lonely pondering, like the sound of a pebble thrown down an old well until it reaches the bottom.

 I see the mindless pattern you trace on the damp soil with your fingers 

and they read like an ode for the long forgotten, rotten into ashes and carrion flowers. 

You've been there before their births, and a million others. 

I see the time's tides frozen into tides of brown in your eyes, and in the middle a void filled with 

every human emotion since the first thought was born. 

I see it in your eyes and then I realize I've never been hiding. 

You look through me. 

There's no hiding from a cryptid like you, something bound to earth yet so unearthly, 

something that has seen the end to every curious pitiful human who stalked it like a predator without knowing to be the actual prey. 

And I knew that when I die i'll be a speck of hazel on the tides in your iris. 

And I welcome it. 

I welcome your hands as they grip my throat and I see it again in your eyes. 

I know you see it in mine too, and why oh why did I ever think you weren't human. 

I can see you and at the brink of death at your hands, all I can do is smile. 

A predator longing to be loved by its prey, a wolf wanting to be accepted by the puny little rabbits it eats. 

I see the humanity in you and I know you imagine being loved by me. 

Imagine me living for a second of your lifetime and quenching your need for solace. 

And as your hands clench tighter, I wonder how that would be. 

Making peace with a creature so human and so permanent, and letting myself be spent to fix its wounds. 

Like a band-aid to a bullet would. 

A wasteful life but something about it appeals to me. 

And it does to you too. 

And that's why you need to watch me close my eyes before you can change your mind. 

And wordlessly I ask you to write an ode for me like you did for your last prey, and ask you to watch the water lap at it until it fades into the lake.

    I tried to personify time as a cryptid. This was an allusion to a person accepting the fact that one day, time will kill us. I could have made this a little less confusing but I'm happy with the way it has turned out to be. Some of my friends saw this as a romanticized abusive relationship, which, to be fair... does suit the writing. This is completely up to the readers' interpretation, I just want to leave a disclaimer that I do not encourage domestic or any form of abuse, in case it might not be clear.