Losing trinkets where  the beach tide turns into murky water that can’t be trusted quite the same
I stayed there far too long, and got scared of leaving my tiny world, my secure and safe filth
I have been banished now, but I only breathed in the air from desperation born in ugly ignorance
The nothing feeling is taking over again deep inside

Beneath the barnacles bite-bite-biting hard carbon or something based matter into
My soft and tender flesh, my skin is made of layers, but  unlike most  skin, it is easier to tear
And every cell that fights and clots and works to keep me alive is weak against jagged edges
The hurting feeling is telling me to tell myself things again

Things like, I am worthless  and will always be, like, I have no one to blame more than myself
Perhaps the cruelest, “you  deserve  this”; I cry out, knowing it to be half-true
Wailing, in internal agony as  I poke at my own wounds, putting off the procedures

I have done this to others. I am  not unfamiliar with the process.
Red hot metal singes hairs it brushes by as it cuts quickly, performs an amputation of sorts
of all that has been hurting me for years, but also, of  the  only dull gold that remains
Each part of every bad  awful lesson I was  ever taught and believed (why wouldn’t I believe?)

I know this part. What is  gone is  long gone. Blackened and withered. Dust in my universe.
I still hold onto  the  infected parts of ruin that I can scrape  up  from the ground
With shaking fingers claw at the clumps  and mucus-filled parts  to lift  them
As if to save them, as if such a thing were possible. I recall lush greenery and warm sunlight

I am not ready to let go. But  I have to be. I  am not ready to feel more pain. I have to be.
It’s  the  only way there is that  will ever one day teach me relief from this exile and more
Reality contains not only stimulating things I mask my obscene reactions to
And sedating things like most of the things when you reach a certain part of the murky swamp:

The swamp contains eyes watching, and acid in protective cartons; so  tempting to break open
A quick, selfish – did I  say quick? It would not be quick – yet so selfish death by suicide
This place reeks  of  the bodies that had this  idea before me and followed through
My ankles itch as  the acid  they allowed to slowly dissolve them irritates my outer layer  of skin

I have begun to run in this swamp, to feel the now full-on painful drops of acidic liquid
They splash up at my feet making impact on the hard old corroded metal circles underneath
My calves, my lower thighs  are beginning to hurt as droplets catch upon my skin in new places
I simply wince  and keep running, dropping every now-dead  thing I had collected 

Every dead thing that had been cut from me, hoarded, my fingers sticky  with the viscous…him
Hoarded treasure that is no longer mine to hold, hence my infected rot. It’s unfair, but I paid him
No attention, none whatsoever, I drove him to create this very pool of acidic stench, I now know
I watch as he slips and fall through somehow into clarity, where he shines clean and bright

I knew they were worth this, though I let them rot upon my body, tacked upon me as I stumbled
Like a heart on paper on a fridge, soured with time and a splash of something that got on it
Like back when you loved me. I didn’t know.  I didn’t know you were rotting.
I am so sorry, because I should have. I really didn’t, though, you see!

Now I’ve observed enough  to know the ways  to keep the  things in your life you are lucky enough to have and watch them sparkle;
I know how to keep them from spoiling like milk left out
My cloth to polish lies next to an empty spot, for who trusts someone with my past with precious gold?
A past where I  let  it dull and covered  it with  rot. Tell me;
If you were me,
what would you do,
about that?