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My hands…black like electrocution, like energy that’s seeking an exit before exploding, my nails more like claws, blood beneath and staining the cuticles…a flash of insanity or clarity? in visions I sometimes can’t read…I slam the water off and realize I’m not breathing…I can’t detect my own heart beating…and then a stuttering ache reminding me of mortality…I sit…naked upon the shock of cold porcelain and wait for the world to settle about me…my hands once again pink and living tell of the tale in which I have to pull myself from the corpse, having to separate which eye I’m seeing through…swiftly disorienting…retrieving my bearings…I am the cursed one, built of broken minded pieces and faded souls in tatter, fashioned into a monstrosity of courageous proportions…I was once told in my youth, nothing’s more frightening than our ghosts of self, the skeletons we hide away in closets…I didn’t buy it…the scariest thing I had come to find, was simply being human… …

E. A. O'Connell