claim

i have no use for exhortation. stay there, inside the circle of your light, and leave me here, in my dense darkness. it is not since yesterday that i have wallowed in the shadows: i do not cultivate seraphic pallor, i do not shape a pious gaze with my eyes, i never bury my face in the mask of holiness, nor do i feed the expectation of seeing my image enthroned upon an altar.

unlike the good samaritans, i do not love my neighbor, nor do i know what that even means. i do not like people, to shorten the inventory of my preferences.

after all, someone must, you fraud — and here i borrow your little magic word — “assume” the tenebrous villain of the story. someone must assume him, if only to preserve that lucid aura levitating over the back of your neck.

so i assume the whole of evil, since there is as much of the divine in wickedness as there is of the divine in sanctity.

and besides, you fraud, if i cannot be loved, i am more than content to be hated.