Hope #5

i am the sore that they fear -- the one they avoid -- the pain that they run from -- the girl under the bed whose head -- fragile as an eggshell -- cracks to reveal the betrayal and hopelessness that they hate -- the one who runs naked and exposed through the cemetery mind -- the one they choose to avoid because they fear themselves but it is i who suffer as well -- left alone and abandoned to be eaten alive by the infections of my own sores -- the gnawing away -- the destruction and collapse of the shell -- freezing, shivering, sweating, raw and open with tremors i expel the acidic evidence boiling in the pit of my stomach up into my throat and down onto the discarded jeans next to my bed on this my first complete day without any effexor for the past lost decade....