Work Text:
There’s a boy in a bin.
There’s a boy in a bin and it’s only ten o’ clock,
only ten,
LA barely notices the night has started.
There’s a boy in a bin and you put him there because you had to.
There’s a boy in a bin and you put him there because you could.
But let’s not kid, Gable.
There’s a boy in a bin and you put him there because you killed him.
There’s a boy in a bin and don’t you dare dress it up as a necessary act,
don’t call it instinct,
don’t call it a lesson learned too late.
There’s a boy in a bin and he is dead.
There’s a boy in a bin and the alley he’s in smells like piss and oranges
and old heat.
There’s a boy in a bin and you came here to feel taller than your shadow.
Liar.
There’s a boy in a bin and you wanted to feel
full
full
full
because empty and emaciated is what your blood has always been accused of.
There’s a boy in a bin and you didn’t plan the ending.
There’s a boy in a bin and you never do.
There’s a boy in a bin and that’s how Horatio worked too—
beginning,
hypothesis,
disposal.
There’s a boy in a bin and the word disposal
slides too easily into your mouth.
There’s a boy in a bin and you want to throw up.
The boy (before the bin) wore a suit.
it wasn’t expensive,
it just wanted to be.
The boy had cuffs that were frayed,
shoes that were scuffed,
A tie loosened like he’d already lost the argument with the night.
But he’s in a bin now and he’d been drinking since five.
Since five.
Since five and you tasted it—
cheap whiskey,
cheap beer,
the sour hope of something going numb before it breaks.
But he’s in a bin now and the alcohol he wasted himself on blooms through you,
Warm
Sweet
and Humiliating,
like wearing someone else’s coat and pretending it fits when really
it’s honey sweat slick satin sticks to you and
you know you are an imposter.
But you tell yourself anyway that that boy in that bin probably had it coming.
He probably worked in tech.
Probably used slurs.
Probably one of those who would spit on the street
Probably, he vapes.
And walks too slow
And doesn’t wash his hands after a piss.
And makes people like you feel unsafe
And doesn’t care how he treads the world he steps on
Probably, he’s called “Trent”
or something worse.
So, really, it’s his fault he’s in a bin.
But Trent apologised when first he bumped into you.
And behind the stink of yet–to-come success
Trent reeked of being
down on his luck,
down on himself,
down enough to follow you into shadow.
And so, what his fucking name was doesn’t matter really anyway does it.
Because there’s a boy in a bin and you were careful.
There’s a boy in a bin and you were gentle.
There’s a boy in a bin and you hate that those words apply.
Before the bin, you danced him backwards.
your body remembered how.
-Count, turn, steps
Before your hands don’t know where to go
And your conscience blinds itself in a moment.
So, now, there’s a boy in your arms and you tell yourself: take just enough.
But really, just enough is a lie as there’s a boy in the arms of a monster
And you’ve tried to fight the monster before.
The monster pulls the ring out for you.
Just the tip of it, careless, ornamental,
And plunges it into a vein you didn’t mean to hit,
a bright wrongness scalped under skin,
and suddenly the night is louder than it was a second ago.
The blood of the boy won’t behave.
There’s blood and it rushes like it’s late for something,
slipping past your hands, past your plans of a tidy night.
It’s all blood and you feel it leaving him faster
than you can decide what you are left as now.
There’s a boy, dying, and you panic.
and you tear your skirt without thinking,
fabric screaming in the dark,
And you press it there like pressure alone might rewrite biology.
You’re panicking and you lick, desperately, humiliatingly
trying to heal what you’ve already named expendable.
The blood in your mouth tastes like metal and gin.
the alcohol sings through you again,
a borrowed courage curdling into permission.
You can’t stop the blood and you feel the truth settle—
this isn’t stopping,
this was never stopping.
And so there’s a path out now and inevitability opens its arms.
you give in because resisting now
would mean carrying two kinds of guilt.
And you choose the simpler sin:
finish,
feed,
don’t look back.
There’s a boy and you drain him dry
until there’s nothing left to argue with.
A boy is a body now and the night is quiet
A boy is a body now and you are full.
A boy is a body now and you are exhausted—
Because that transformation- from boy to body- is a full time job
You’d know.
And yet still he died and when it was over
you stood there like you were waiting for instructions.
He died at your hands and no one gave them to you.
There was a body then, leftover carrion muck, and Kathryn would have laughed.
Because you had no idea what to do with it.
She’d say “You’re thinking too hard.”
She would have already forgotten his face.
She’d have already put him in the bin and that difference splits you open.
So you lift him up and you envy her.
And you turn him over and you hate her for surviving so cleanly.
And you force open the lock on the bin and you did it partly because she did,
And you dump him there because you wanted to be less alone in the monstrousness of it.
And yet you are so alone.
There’s a boy in a bin now and the lid clangs shut
like punctuation.
There’s a boy in a bin and just before that you layered the trash over him—
coffee cups, receipts, something sticky and fresh
someone else’s leftovers—
the city finishing the job for you.
And you pressed your guilt down with it.
There’s a boy in a bin and no cameras saw.
There’s a boy in a bin and you checked.
There’s a boy in a bin and that relief
makes you feel worse than the act itself.
Because there’s a boy in a bin and you’re standing here wiping your mouth, catching the vitae that you’ve missed.
There’s a boy in a bin and you do it the way Horatio did.
There’s a boy in a bin and that’s when you feel sick.
You’re sick and you are a thinblood,
A kind of excuse,
thin like something everyone expects to tear.
You’re sick because your family is already gone
already decided you were expendable.
But if you saw them now,
You’d be sick even more because now you agree with them.
You begin to walk away from the boy in the bin and you wonder who might be waiting for him.
He’s stuck in the bin and you imagine a phone lighting up,
Within a bin
again, again.
He’s in there and you imagine someone saying his name
with their whole chest.
He’s there and you’re here and you never asked for his name.
But you’ll try not to give him one now,
because names only make ghosts heavier.
You try to forget the bin and you walk home drunk on stolen hours.
You try to forget it and the city looks the same.
You know you won’t forget and that is the cruelty of it.
You won’t forget and so you can’t get clean.
You can’t get clean but you scrub anyway.
You scrub and scrub but the smell is memory now, not blood.
When dawn falls on that bin, the boy will not see it
When a truck comes, the boy will fall into a steadier darkness
And the city will swallow him
without choking.
You’ll have to walk there still, in that alley
and this is the part no one warned you about
not the hunger,
not the killing,
but the carrying of it all.
because beneath the dirt and detritus, there’s will always be boys you killed here and they won’t be done with you
Like you were with them.
That boy will be there
every time you dance
and every time you want to forget it all
you will feel where you led him and
you will feel how you let him fall into the arms of a monster.
There’s a boy you took from this world
and you are not like Horatio—
Not not not not not not
not not mot not not not not not not
not not not
not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not
not not not not
not not not not
not not not not not not not
not not not not not not not not not not
not not not
not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not
not not not not NOT.
What’s it worth pretending?
There’s a boy in a bin.
There’s a boy in a bin and you did this.
There’s a boy in a bin and this will always be your first.
There’s a boy in a bin and finally it hits you like a closing lid. Of course it does.
because you were a boy once too.