Slug

My back is broken from the world; it collapses my spine one vertebra at a time to make me small, to make me cower before it. You see, I've lost, or at least I've been losing for quite some time, and it's not the fault of the people around me as much as they want it to be. The truth is I am mushy. I hate to move quickly, I hate to say my funny thoughts, I hate to make people think I am anything more than an equal to the chair that they are sitting in. I need a shell. I need a shell; I am mushy.

I thought I was strong, witty, and fun to be around until I remembered what I was when I was a child. I was unafraid to be ridiculous, climb too high in trees, move a little too fast, breathe hard. Everything from the era of feeling has seemed to dissipate in the monotonous days I am thrust into. I'm not so sure I like the part of me that was aged in the process. That is to say, I have more knowledge and understanding of the world but my wonder did not grow in the same sense. 

I grew up in a bamboo forest where the water rippled past and quenched my soul, and I dug deep into the earth to squeeze the grubs below. I danced in a ridiculously tribal manner swiveling around my walking and no one existed. 

I don't want to be old, and I want to stop getting older because it hurts. While my bones are achy, it gets much worse: I can feel the anxiety of just having to exist in a world I don't fit into piercing my rib cage with such vigor. I've always known that my body would age in a grim way, but I never imagined my emotions to age in such a way as this. Everything sparks this dim hatred, this feeling that I am serving men who don't deserve it. 

I want to make something beautiful on its own, not something I create in response to the suffering being inflicted on me. There is already a natural order of suffering, so why do men take it upon themselves to amplify the pain in every one of us? Pain is treated like a common place event when it doesn't have to be. 

As humans we have to deal with loss constantly, which is something that is inevitable and what makes us all the same. Loss is a natural thing because time and age does exist and we get wiser in this measurement. The unnatural suffering is derived from what is taken from us and while a majority can relate to this, is it something that can so easily be diminished if the greed of the minority was wiped away with it. 

I am here to love and be loved.

I am here to smile and make people smile.

I am fighting for that, but I have been turned into a slug that people are waiting to throw salt on because I move slowly and stick to my surroundings. I don't take a definite shape of the culture therefore I must be ugly. I must be.