Painful Memories

Fingers cross frivolously weak bones; spines on repeat and ribs twist like the arms of a decrepit tree. A box labeled fragile, he was never handled with care. Knocked around, passed between hungry fingers, until the contents were so battered and bruise they couldn't distinguish left from right and up from down. Half-hearted apologies are mumbled through weary lips, and his whole life he listens earnestly -- believes in their fragility, and hopes that they will mend. Break through the exterior he has built, instill within him the trust he so earnestly seeks.


Humbly committed to the prison they had built for him, there was no evidence of bail. Heartbeats rotting in frozen nights, wails muffled into frostbitten wind. Nervous fingers twitched with the anxiety of contact, a gift given from the women who had birthed him -- made him afraid of flying objects and pinched words. He pushed question marks at the ends of statements, hid behind shielded, ashen limbs, and wondered on the price of his sanity.

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His home became stale. Worn with pictures of martyrs; hanging from barely plastered walls. He grew restless, weary eyes dazzled with the destiny of greatness -- a picture painted into the foreground of his mind, present with his every bred action. He swung with the delicacy of a fawn blossoming into a stag -- anchors tethering him to the ground he had yet to wither within. They faded, with time. Ghosts murmuring on the wind as they swayed in and out of existence.

Wandered at a young age, crept within the dying streets and brawled in hidden corners with the fray. A mongrel. Street-rat. He knew nothing but the acid that crept through his veins -- poisoned his insides as well as his outsides; broken up fragments of dissected mind pieces bled through gardened veils. Couldn't find ways to translate feelings into words; bled his feelings into fists, and pounded, pounded, pounded until his vision was one of rainbows -- yellow, blue, purple, red. He couldn't understand the word stop. Muffled into the dictionary of words he barely knew, such as love, understanding. No incentive to learn, no incentive to live -- just a burnt flame quickly dissipating to ash.