I close my eyes and try to drown out the sounds of the people around me. I crack a smile and my clay mask tautly stretches across my dimples, and starts to peel and shed like a second skin. My bones feel numb, and my brain crackles with electricity. I begin to choke on the silence around me as the spectators begin to stop, and watch the spectacle that is me.
Me, I am dying, drowning in the eyes of my peers, and frozen in place by the power of their words.
But as I find you in the crowd, and as your fingers sort through their shells, you pick me out of this mob and lift me up, and I grab hold of your strong lifeline, and climb up to the Sun that is you.
You, you are calling. You are the body that I revolve around; you are my shelter in the raging storm.
You are the hand that mine fits in to. You are the arms that I wrap myself up with, and the feet that carried me through the hot coals of my own fire. You are the mouth that whispers my motto and the heart that wants to beat for me. You are the fists that fight for my honor. You are the eyes that see through my barriers, and see to the heart beneath. You are the body that is all around me, now shielding me from those dark eyes as I shed another day’s pain and sorrow.