004
The blank walls cut like knives to my skin,
but I didn’t have the time or the will
to enjoy the pain.
Instead, I focused my attention on making the guard watching me
very, very uncomfortable.
(My eyes dug like razor blades into his skull
and the cut were bleeding insecurity
and everything he had for breakfast this morning.)
Oh, how I loved to watch people squirm,
especially when I was the one who caused the
butterflies and the twitch in their eyelids.
The guard grew hot and tore away
the spiderwebs I weaved around him.
He rested a fatigued hand on my shoulder
(intimidation? not a doubt in my mind.)
and told me that I’d have the absolute pleasure
(as if)
of meeting some of the other patients
as the administration combed through my paperwork.
Judith’s breath grew in thick vines across my neck
as I walked over to the other lifeforms.
She was ripe with curiosity, and I figured
that Bruce and Clarence were still to
painfully stubborn to come with us.
“You’ll be as mindless as them quite soon, my dear.”
Judith played with strands of my hair
and I swatted her away, angry at her statement.
How could I not be offended?
Nobody would wish this type of torture upon themselves.
Everyone in the room was having staring contests with the wall,
but at the mere sound of my paper footsteps
on the ground
their eyes flickered with a fire coming from an expired match;
flickered at me like I was their messiah.
The naïve never fail to entertain me.
