Shame On You

Don’t listen to the whisper. Don’t encourage the lying Siren: That your brain is a trash island, refuse washed and scattered upon the shore. Your mind a broken cobweb dangling, swaying in autumn’s desolate breath, catching dead leaves, detritus, and various bugs. That your heart is crumbling walls, eroded; dilapidated and weathered like an old barn on a forgotten patch of land. That your thoughts are dried worms stuck on a summer sidewalk, and there’re knives somewhere behind your eyeballs. That your tongue is a cinderblock atop a dead and rotting squirrel. That needles line your throat and birds fall from your sky. That you’re a flower with no petals and no pollen, refusing to die, in a state of perpetual wilt. That you’re a cracked mirror, a stained rug, a stolen heirloom; an amputee dog. This is shame’s whisper; don’t’ listen lest you start to believe and become dead snakeskin.