The first one bites her thumb and asks:
"What if this all comes to nothing? Can you live with nothing, you artist, you liar? When you are stringy with age who will wipe their spit from your face? You know not what you do. Your tongue is merely silver-plate, and it does not belong to you."
The second one rolls the words off like well-tumbled stones, silky with repetition:
"You fear everything. Fuck you and your demons. I will keep the one bright eye I have to see with."
First: "You are so arrogant...you really think it is their loss if they don't love you?"
Second: "It is useful to think that way."
First: "Don't pretend to be so calm. I have seen heard what you mutter into that smeared pillow. You love and hate too deeply. It is only a matter of time before..."
"Snap!"
Second: "I will not listen to you anymore than I did the rest of them."
And the first one says I will not be there to see you fall down and you will not get up again and the second one says don't push me I hate you I will cut you off like an arm whose bones have been crushed useless and the first one says...
The voice of the third hits like a gavel, slices clean through the murky stream, saying:
"Why all this nonsense and deliberation?"
The peonies are bright cups of blood,
The honeysuckles hush me.
You two wriggle with suspicion. You have tied your own hands, because you do not trust yourselves.
And all was quiet.