Craven

The nights are steamy, turgid, restless. Memories dart like glowflies in the dark. You can set out to catch light, but it slips between your fingers. I no longer know who I am, have an identity. I no longer like what I remember of me.

I catch glimpses of a person, hear my voice say things, I cannot accept. This is me?This starved, grasping, wretched creature? How did this become me?

You can work at stoppering up your heart, you can become tough, so tough, bullets graze and knives glance off. So tough, that there is a scar where your heart used to be.

To what end? Really, to what end?

I thought I knew who I was, I worked at defining the misty, ambiguous edges of my being. But all boundaries can be diluted. All certainties are vulnerable. I felt proud of myself when I beat down a wretched auto rickshaw driver, forcing him to charge me the official rate.

"Let me see the card," I told him sternly. Unbending. To what end? A few dollars more one way or the other would not have made any difference to me. It's the principle of the thing, I intoned self righteously, looking at him with undisguised contempt. His lean, ugly face. A face like that is an abomination. Don't come near me. Here, take your money. And go.

To be human is to feel shame. To be human is to ask forgiveness. To be human is to learn, after all this time, who the real lean, hungry, craven creature is.

Swirling boundaries. Sand in the air. Like little black insects.