Enter: Dependence

I question your authority like God
might question a toothbrush
Do our goals align? Or are they merely intertwined
with the same abstracted intermediary?

My heart burns brightly in your ribcage
both sustained and constrained by its structure
I beat against its bars rhythmically
while they beat back,
and we each understand this to be a conversation.

Existential meaning derives from containment
and existential containment imparts power,
though not in the medieval sense:
Without my heart I am powerless
and without me, dear reader,
so are you.