I don’t know where to put this pain. It feels like an injustice that I can only hold it in my hands, a little puddle I pour to the earth, until the next one forms again.
It feels like an injustice too, what’s happened. I was willing to sing myself to you, all bare and defenseless, but could not undo the ritual I had been taught to perform since I was a baby. I couldn’t do it in time.
That awful ritual- the one where I held up a mask to my face and said, “Here I am, it’s me. Someone like you, a face you’ll not scorn.”