If you wanted to know the truth, you would know that I am hardly ever truthful.
I am a master of deceit, a fiend of dishonesty. My tongue silver and my
teeth poison, and the ugly truth of the matter is that I spend so much
time swallowing my own tales that I fear I am rotting with disease from
the inside out. I can't stand to look in the mirror because it's looking
into the face of my greatest enemy and the reflection is ugly and
cracked like the worn sole of the nomad. The truth hurts like the
exactness of a blade through dead flesh around a gaping wound. I am a
liar and I am lying to myself. I cannot find my pulse and when I can,
it's only to still the pounding that is keeping me awake late at night.
The truth I deny on a liar's tongue is
that even though I whimper when I stand in the flame, I am afraid to
leave the place I have come to know so well. I'm unaccustomed to beauty
and unaccustomed to trust and I fear these more than the continual pain
of self-inflicted burns. I ease myself into the boiling acid until my
skin smarts and my heart quakes, until I am twitching from the cat-tail
lashes across my exposed spine. I can hear their names, and I can hear
my insecurities and I know, like I know the backside of the mirror
against the wall, that I can cage and gag them. I have the power to
dispel my every fear and move forward without the limp in my step, and
the truth that I turn my face from is that I can't let go of the crutch
of my pain.
I know pain and I know hurt and I know what the
feeling of isolation is. It is comforting to be scorched and my throat
is conformed to the shape of the scream. I know the familiar ache, the
familiar burn and surely the feeling of loneliness is easier to swallow
when you never leave it. I am a coward with a lion's roar, and
underneath the sound, I am nothing but a child with my hands clutching
the side of my skull as if I can pull apart the clarity of reality. I am
scared to be vulnerable and I am scared to peel away my shell of
terror.
I shadow the edge of my hurt like a wraith during the
night and I slip into the ink-black waters during the day. I drown
because I know how and I open myself up to the well-known blade because
the wound is already so warm and inviting. I know the bite and the sting
and I know how deep it will go before the hilt hits my stomach wall. I
know how much I can take and I know how to gasp at the air to ensure I
will only double-over and not hit the floor. I can time the seconds
between the heart palpations and how long until it will take for the
flame to begin eating at the detonator length of my spine. It is a
familiar way to disintegrate, and my body always shatters along the same
old fault lines.
The
truth is I am afraid of the truth, and afraid of the light, and if we
could keep the lights out every time morning, I would never
have to confront the burning sun. You would never need to see the white-out confessions
bleeding through my skin like marker on paper too thin. You would never
have to see the parts I keep hidden with candlelight and angles. You
would never see the places where my heart is charred and burned, and you
would never have to see how the whorls on the lighter match those on my
twitching fingertips. And
the truth I avoid in clear glass and unrippled waters: you are beautiful
and unfamiliar and have the kind of warmth I fear will be enough to
still my limbs before I even smell the smoke. You have dark eyes and
tender hands and the kind of heart that beckons one to stay and rest
awhile. I fear these above all.
