The enormity of my desire disgusts me; pollock

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

(Somewhere, in a land far, far away, he had been refashioned.
He had been made mighty.)

The gift giver has slipped under and over the barbed wire of his multiple lives too many times. He has indulged the pull of dreams and has begun to suss out the queer facts nestled amongst.
...decided to become mighty. Candied words; half-truths – it is easier for Pollock to acquiesce to his own illusions of grandeur than to try and understand how he had come to slit the skin of his former self and rebirth. It is easier to spin this web. It is easier to catch them with it. It is far harder to wade through the suck of his own memories and try to put the puzzle back together.

One day he had tucked himself to sleep in the pine needles and the next morning, he had woken up with head heavy and hooves split.

He had woken up with an ache in his chest and bones and yet he knew…
(it’s time – the boy must be buried, bones and all)
—he was better. He was mighty. (He had cracked open the hard protection of some Norwegian breastbone and had come up with a heart of darkness clutched in his fingers.)

In some part, he had decided to become mighty long before he had become human. Except he had been manacled to a body found wanting.
He had reached the end of the rope that knotted his neck and had found himself in shadows. He had found himself in the ragged breaths of those who could not see him, tasting their fear (but not their blood). He had found himself in the heady mixture of arousal and disgust as he watched their autumnal feasts. He found himself excited by their trickles of sweat… In hindsight, he had been pathetic. This boy does not have to be. Though in truth, Pollock cannot decide what he finds more appetizing – the boy finding himself in his shadows, or the boy finding out he has been found wanting.

(But he had been small and strange once, too. Before he had been buried.)

‘I’ll be so good.’
“That’s a fine lad.” He nods, his eyes brightening was the boy sticks in his honey. 
Like a neurosurgeon, he delicately wraps a finger around a curl of fear – it is small, but he changes himself. His mouth corners draw unsettling back, his sneer splitting his face to his cheeks, just below his eyes. The crocodile smile reveals yellowed and crooked teeth. This is just for him, a transformation only the boy can see.
“Tell me something boy, what do you fear most?” strings of saliva droop and criss-cross when he opens his too-wide mouth. “It's important to face your fears, you see.” The gifter lets go and allows the boy's chemicals to sort themselves out and his lips to slink back to place.

POLLOCK
the gift giver and guardian