I have a little glass vial
Of nasty, vile, rancid sludge.
If you popped off its wine-cork top,
The sour smell of mold and rot
Would evoke your utmost instant regret.
I keep this little glass vial
In my inner pocket, lining my coat.
I can't fathom the idea of leaving it home,
For some poor soul to unearth someday,
And so I keep it under my own watchful eye.
I can't discard of my vial,
Lest some rat or fly be so unfortunate
As to stumble upon my repulsive concoction.
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Protect the environment from your harmful toxins.
My glass vial has a small leak, I'm afraid.
I get occasional comments on the sour scent,
From those who happen to get a little too close,
And so I apologize and promise to cleanse,
And I keep my preventative distance.
The brass of the brim stains me green,
And the horrible scent, I believe, is growing
Harder to distinguish from my own each day
That aching indent the vial presses into skin,
Takes ever so slightly longer to buffer out again.
Should anyone find out about my vial,
The world I know may yet turn on its head.
To find out I've been harboring such things,
This horrible, unknowable substance of mine.
Would they ever look at me the same?
Somehow simultaneously, in my mind,
I'm absolutely certain that they already know.
That they're judging me for my little glass vial.
Watching and listening and waiting
To expose me for what they know me to be.
They'll tell me, they'll say with vigor,
A freak like me should play with my sludge
Far away from where anyone else might see.
I should be ashamed of housing this goo,
And even more so, of thinking I could hide.
I can read the messages between their lines,
They hope it's corrosive, and swallows me whole.
A slow, painful and deserved death, self-inflicted
But if I were gone, who would watch my vial?
Or would it get absorbed into my skin as I grew cold?
I could imagine mold spores spreading,
Extending their way outward from my heart.
Til the ends of my fingers are blackened and decayed
Til every inch of me is fuzzy and hollowed,
Til the sun sets, and the bugs take their leave.
Strangely enough, it seems the natural course,
For this life of mine to end with self induced rot.
I couldn't let go of that rancid old vial,
Couldn't remember any life I'd lived without it,
Let alone imagine returning to that state.
And in return, it began to eat at me inside-out.
Disfiguring my body, my face, my skin
Clouding over my painfully naive eyes,
Drowning out stars with mold-spore spots,
Replacing the love with fur and gunk.
It's my fault, I made this horrible thing myself.
When or how, escapes my mind these days
But I'm absolutely certain its origin lies with me,
Confident that I deserve its consequences in full,
And positive that there's no other turn of course.
I'll bury myself among leaves and trees one day,
Once I detach myself from my selfish human desires
And reconcile with the rest of the mold and fungi,
Where decomposers and parasites like me belong,
Friends only with inchworms and fruit fly swarms.
Should they unearth me at some point in time,
My disfigured body a map of what went wrong,
May what they find be buried in farmable soil,
Let this ruined, irredeemable body of mine
Serve at least one purpose over its time on this earth
And never let anyone know about my little glass vial.
