Please Stop

I did not write a single word over the majority of this winter for the same reason one would not look in the mirror if they hadn't slept for two weeks, were suffering from a repugnant skin rash and had undertaken a vicious bout of acne.

My dark days could be reflected on once I surfaced, but until then my mirrors were black boxes in the piping hot room of my childhood home. I could not see a thing so I expected the worst. I do not want to know what beasts were dwelling in those rectangles. I spent four years feeling their breath on the back of my neck as they tied strings to my wrists. 

I don't know what to tell the people I love when I cry becasue of my own human condition. When I can feel the evil growing on the inside of my skull like moss, inching outward to the pace of the blood pumping in my temples. I don't know how to tell them I don't want to do anything because my soul feels like a tea bag filled with the lovliest samplings of jasmin and vanilla and flecks of gold, being steeped in the world's poison. 

With my egotistical infatuation with self expression and my unfaltering love to run away I cannot blame them for being confused when I want to spend days and days in my dark room dreaming up the monsters I might be in the company of and avoiding all the mirrors.