Why?
Why would you ever think that you could ever mean that much to me?
You stare at the ink-spattered glove moving across my face.
No, it isn't the smudged mascara of a thousand tears cried there.
Not the dried stain of a
Rainy. Dreary. Day.

So sorry to most pleasurably disappoint

And what have you there? Gleaming in your keeper's eye?

You dress it up and dangle it about my head like a cicada flittering on a string during hot Argentine, incense filled nights.

I burnt my finger once lighting the incense for nightly prayer.
That summer I blamed my isolation on what the burn had left: a large, sticky, unsightly welt.
The only trace of blind, naive, ignorantly whole-hearted belief.
My slightly, yet debilitating, wounded hand prevented my holding or shaking of any new body, or old body's hand.
But perhaps I only speak out of the need for a scapegoat?

Still, I hid the finger in tightly fastened bindings, as if to shut out just one more imperfection.
As if my inborn afflictions simply were not enough.
I could not stand one more earth inherited crack, nick, or stitch.

My empty, wounded, prideful hand wrapped around a cold, night sweat ridden glass.
The odor of vinegar, my makeshift poultice, rose to greet me.
To seat me. To allow the painful memories to slowly pick at and eat me.
Zealously. They make a feast of me.
Night after sarcastically lonely night.

But
Why?
Why would you ever think that you had ever meant that much to me?