Sometimes it comes as scratches

Black and sharp as night

As if by pencil

Or stick of the hardest charcoal.

And others it comes as ink,

Thick and wet,

The kind that blinds and drowns.

But neither are so bad as the

Words.

As if the scratches and the ink

Come together to form script and voice.

Together, the pains take on

Humanity.

It growls like beast and taunts like bully.

It grows hands, wraps gnarled fingers around

Neck and face, twists and pulls.

Grabs arms and hands and flails,

Looking for purchase and purpose.

Looking for fellow pain.

Sometimes it comes as fog.

And others as rain.

It gouges sight and lobotomizes reason.

It never makes sense.

It never makes sense.

Never makes sense.

It Makes sense, it creates it.

The scratches and the ink and the fog and the rain

Become sight and reason, sense.

For no more than a second.

But that second

Is an eternity in the farthest reaches of a neverending hell.

The fire licks and licks and licks

Until it feels like a dog.

Mere soft warmth.

Normal, once again.