Self Portrait
Ebbing. Shaving layers and layers away to dismal bone. Through every wasted musing dawn grows nearer. I hear it. The blood roaring. The drip of fluid down my spine. Everything’s so loud now I nearly stopped noticing it. Grasping my shoulders. The one breath out of a hundred thousand that wasn't mine. That bug bite that isn't there. The sickly smell of rot that dissipates the moment you notice it. Perverse and acrid, tracing circles on my back. Hidden in clear view it permeates within, breaching each membrane. Feeding. Nesting. Fetid tendrils writhe under supple flesh, itching itching itching. Dig at the pores, pull them out out out. Watch it wriggling under the light, engorged by what it takes from me. Oozing, dilated wounds house scores of feasting kin. Bleach them. Scrub the holes away. Till flesh becomes bone. Respite. Pain. Hatred. Digestion. I detest it in every way but it never ceases to re-ingrain its fingers. I cant say how long I’m free from this deceit, but it's never more than a month before I notice that first breath I didn't take again. Sometimes it stares back at me in the mirror, but only the first time I see it. It peers up at me pathetically with drooping hollow eyes. What a putrid, pitiful creature. It fills me with such a murderous loathing. I want to watch it scream. I want to watch it flail helplessly in my sink as it desperately twists and twitches in agony searching for something to latch onto. I want to squeeze it until its pleading eyes pop in glorious agony. But for all my wishful thinking I cant seem to stop it bedding in new roots. Sometimes, I can feel it smiling. I've never seen it, but every now and again on that hundred thousandth breath, I’ll feel it humming. And every time its grin vibrates through my skull, I can feel something kneading deeper and deeper into my brain. The very last time I felt it, I could swear I heard the humming break into song. A sort of slew of wordless vocables. Then, for a brief moment of bliss, that squirming in my skull stopped, and for the first time we smiled in unison. I've not seen it for a couple of weeks now. I can feel those roots in my neck, I can feel them pulsating and squirming when I tear them out, but I haven't heard that stolen breath since. I just keep hearing that song-like cooing over and over.