I See Myself As Someone

She Lights A Match In The Dark Hall And Moves It Onto The Wick Of The Candle. Light Lifts Itself Onto Her Shoulders. She Is On Her Knees. She Puts Her Hands On Her Thighs And Breathes In The Smell Of The Sulphur. She Imagines She Slap Breathes In Light.

I Am Someone Who Has A Cold Heart. If I Am Beside A Great Grief I Throw Barriers Up So The Loss Cannot Go Too Deep Or Too Far. There Is A Wall Instantly In Place, And It Will Not Fall.

He Walked Out Of The Hospital Into The Sun, Into Open Air For The First Time In Months, Out Of The Green-lit Rooms That Lay Like Glass In His Mind. He Stood There Breathing Everything In, The Hurry Of Everyone. First, He Thought, I Need Shoes With Rubber On The Bottom. I Need Gelato.

You Have To Protect Yourself From Sadness. Sadness Is Very Close To Hate. Let Me Tell You This. This Is The Thing I Learned. If You Take In Someone Else's Poison – Thinking You Can Cure Them By Sharing It – You Will Instead Store It Within You. Those Men In The Desert Were Smarter Than You. They Assumed He Could Be Useful. So They Saved Him, But When He Was No Longer Useful They Left Him.

She Had Always Wanted Words, She Loved Them; Grew Up On Them. Words Gave Her Clarity, Brought Reason, Shape.