People say it’s like burning, but all I get is the ache.

Dull and stabbing
            constant and ebbing
                        etched into my Self in prickling
throbs.

“Check out that wig. Fuckin' blue, man. Blue.”

Because I chopped it off after cowering against a kitchen cabinet, after
lips hurled vocal volleys
simultaneously stinging and enraging
apparently the recipe for impulsiveness.

Disgusting

is what I am                                        

to her.

Paint me into the sky with your eyes, I need some
color.
Let me soak up some of those shimmers kissing your skin, caressed into that
aloe vera lotion I lent you, the one that smells like
tender sweetness.

Promise

is what I said
to myself
after we–

But it’s so hard to shatter a shell once you’ve molded it to
the body, once the eager tongues of forced flame have fused it into
indestructible, once you’ve adorned it with the lies of
attraction
they want to be fed.

they:
as in, savage heads of pristine porcelain, gloriously
empty of empathy
with eyes of glass fogged over “unnatural.”

            shhhhhh–if I whisper your name I almost forget the ache
                    
It can’t be a curtain because it’s not that easy
to pull back.

It can’t be armor because it doesn’t protect, rather
poisons
            pervades in
                        pernicious
glares.

People say it’s like burning.

Sensationalist bullshit.
It’s just an ache.
Quiet.
            Unrelenting.
                        Terrifying
only because
I don’t know how
to soothe it.