There are little white bumps developing on my legs. I guess my father has them too, supposedly connected to his Diabetes. But I’m not Diabetic. I know where these strange masks come from: the course of poisons sent from tweaked organs. I think my time limit is based on the concept that I’m poisoned inside out, from the deep clogged pockets, quickening blood to the Bilirubin stares. It manifests itself like an expanding outer shell, like Swan after the apocalypse, her mask thickening and hardening with every passing day. I feel the yellow in my eyes, the venom peeking out of the available pores and collecting into scale-like fragments.
And I feel filthy. Inhuman. Imperfect. Impure.
Maybe it is to become my shell, my cocoon, my final wrap. Pharoahs were mummified in careful cloth and surrendered to the other side in pyramids of wonder and coffins of gold. Even the divine-on-Earth didn’t live long. I wonder if Fifteen is an accurate number, and realize with the fatigue of every passing day that the score could be accurate.
We all have to fade someday, let the rigor take over and mortis finger the keys. Some are just destined to hear the piano tune faster than others. The tall black keys strike low. The white keys high. I sometimes wish the piano wasn’t so black and white, that the tones were greyer.
I didn’t ask for this. I woke up one day to an uncommon path, to a cursive sentence and wicked ball-and-chain. I knew I would have to face this alone, realized the artist path would be the only way to find harmony in a world of the perfect, the captivated, the callous and careless. Caring partners are too few and far between these days, the cool women giddy and drunk on the vapid liquid of normalcy and plasticity.
Someday, we won’t fail so easily, our flesh and harmony less collapsible. This species isn’t meant to drift and disappear like flotsam on an endless ocean, like a Swan in a thunderstorm. We are meant to evolve, ascend and explore, become something greater than the sum of our individual parts.
I won’t be around to see that human concerto, but I must work to tune the instruments. As the little white spots expand all over me, onto my hands and face,