I’m scrubbing my soul with lye.
The witching hour approaches, and I’m tired of choking on lingering spores.
On paper, it sounds so simple. The cause of the dark circles under my eyes, the heaviness of my limbs, the pain in my stomach.
I look at the synopsis. Stated so simply.
Was that it? Was that all it was?
Mere months of toxicity?
Mere mold, spreading, creeping up the walls and hanging around the human boulder on the living room floor. Fruiting bodies, releasing toxin.
Across the room, spores whispering around my head like gnats, burrowing into my skin. Rooting, spreading, suffocating. Was that all it was?
Behind my eyes, I watch the months in hyperdrive. Over and over again. Every time less raw. Less crisp, perhaps less reliable.
I was cornered because I didn’t know. Wasn’t that it?
Naivety, hope, guilt. Trying and trying, but never able to change anything.
It wasn’t my fault. Was it?
The apartment is clean now, but the embedded hyphae secrete toxin as they slowly wither away.
A red noxious film, a splotch on my heart, a craving for blood, for recompense I will never hold.
The more I want it, the more it binds me.
I gape in despair at the apparition of spores and pain and fumes. Shadows strung up like cobwebs. I thought I’d fought them all.
I thought this was finally dead.
The paper is soaked in toxin. It stings, burns, fills my mouth with bile.
The paper sees it first, in the dead of night. My creator reads over my shoulder, as the witching hour approaches.
I tell my loved ones in daylight.
I have been poisoned, and I will not hide my weakness from those that will pull me up.
The festering is dead and the hyphae are fading, but there may still be some stubborn embers.
Do not let me become what hurt me.
May this aftermath never be more than a passing sickness.
This lingering pain, the sting of antibiotic.
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A/N: It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Learned a lot of life things this year, including things about negativity and toxic people. Haven’t had the headspace to comment on them coherently, and I apologize for my recent absence on this little corner of the Internet. I hope to get back to a regular blogging schedule soon (one that will also be compatible with my soon-to-begin school year.) Thanks for bearing with me!
Odonata 