This painting depicts what it is to be in a mental room with negative reels developing into what is sometimes real, but often fancied. It is the room where gnarly memories that gnaw at the inner me have been neatly packed away.

Poem

Body Tag

I hoard people
and emotions,
a conditioned response
to deprivation.
What’s far more frightening
is that I hoard
the emotions of others as well,

 People of other people
die vicariously through some,
and are birthed deeper into existence by most.
I’m always habitually sampling the tastes of others, 

savoring each flavor of their truth.
A virgin identity is an impossibility.
I synchronize this plethora of individuals,
creating the soundtrack of the varied lives I’ve lived,

overlapped with the lives of those
that have lived within me.
Halves of wholes.
Spirits in subliminal memories.

During my early twenties I lacked self-awareness, 

obedient to the patterns sewn in my fingers,
a malnourished identity craving a safe place to feed.

Bed sores plague every inch of my sense of self, 

determinedly writhing in excrement,
praying into stale air for a transfiguration of some sort, 

hands torn from palm to forefinger

from foolishly trying to hold on to past agonies.

Lines of my life expelled to heal chafed life lines.

The familiarity of the sorrow was maliciously comforting. 

Grief cradled me unconditionally.

Quite contrarily, 

happiness was a stranger of whom I feared rejection,
still afraid to touch the truth.

The former in its entirety is honest, yet safe.