Occasional retreats into my mind
became regular visits.
Then I became a permanent resident
and so, nowhere else felt like home. Nowhere else could.
Always just inside.
Inside the outside.
Or rather, what the outside had made of me.

Inside pain
Inside scars
behind dark eyes
that had long since lost their stars.

Hoarding pessimism and harbouring cynicism
mistaking resentment for activism,
unrefracted anger through a hollow prism,
locking arms with isms and schisms.

The world knocked all hours
I would look through the peephole, but never open the door
The glass on it was stained bloodshed
A panorama of the world overwhelmingly red
but blue, in 1803 on a Dunbar riverbed.

Once, I opened the door  
the world crawled into my pores.
pain and profanity stretching in my skin
wearing me, tearing me.
eating away at an empath, of course.
I was told that my mind and skin needed apathy to reinforce
I am to stop the world from putting me on all fours.
My nature does not allow for me to be so coarse.
So for now,
I close my doors.