HeartLines

My skin is so pale that it’s see-through, a translucent curtain.

The people observe my bones, how they clank and crackle and pop. They look at them like they want them to break and snap like the raw carrots they ate as a child. Breaking those carrots makes them manageable. If they finish them off, they get to relish in a sweet dessert.

The dogs fixate on my lungs. They expand and contract like their squeaker toys, the ones that
wheeze as their jaws close around them. Contorted faces lean towards me, necks tugging
against their leashes, as they imagine tearing me open to get to my squeaker organs. My blood will run like the stuffing of their playthings. 

The birds prey on my heart. It pumps and beats and skips and writhes like a worm. They
imagine their sharp beaks tearing into it, carrying it off, feeding it to their young. Muscles and
tendons snap apart as they clamor for their share. Delicious, delicious, delicious. 

The god focuses on my being. An anomaly. A performance. He picks it apart and redirects it
and builds me up and tears me down and does it all again. Entranced by the way my insides
roil. His face is blushed at the fantasy of me falling to my knees and shattering. He lusts after
the sight of everything breaking beneath my skin, but it can’t get out. The debris hits against
each other and piles up and cuts me open from the inside, but it is snagged and will not gush out.

The self focuses on my brain. It thinks, it feels, but it does not speak. I revile it and curse it for its evil deeds. 

My skin is so pale that it’s see-through. A glass prison. A one-way mirror. A flimsy excuse for a barricade.