A Letter to a Lethal Timid

"I quietly but persistently punished myself, shredded off the skin until nothing was left except the scent of blood on my fingers.

I worked very hard to not let the black spot grow into cancer and slosh me down.

On countless occasions, your needling, needless remarks pricked my conscience, and my head bursted like a dropped watermelon.

You, dear hater, would never know severely have I been sliced by your venomous words. My vigor drained by the end of the day only to hear the slow pulse of its job half done.

Saddened, I would scratch my wounds too deep for the healing and then let them open.

I remember the nights when my insecurities hemmed in and my sense of fear filled my mouth with hot, dry air and made my body light.

I used to watch you with eyes of hate before I realized that you are nothing but a pile of uncemented bricks that would never take a form, and I pitied you. I could clearly hear your enviousness and malice thudding loudly like a horse’s hoofs. 

And I know now, that deep down you are yearning to be seen and heard. But no, I am not a rehab center for worthless, low self-esteemed addicts like you.

I hope you get a taste of your own medicine;

that someday you have to bite your tongue, grit your teeth and very pretentiously erase even the drop of a single tear from the corner of your eye, just like I did;

I hope someday you have to suck in air to breathe out the sting.

I am confident that my solicitations would realize for filthiness has always been the inventor of misery.

I have had moments when I held the sledgehammer and could have pulverized you,

when I wanted to throw lye on your face, 

to scream that you are a dirty, wretched character.

But who wants to pierce a hollow heart? A homicidal person like you, detested by his own conscious, was sure to bring destruction to his own self.

So instead of wasting my vitality in you, I invested it in my own self. Sometimes though, the tears slip down and make the prospect blurry and even more unreal, yet my world has taken a deep breath and has assertions about continuing to revolve.

I have worked tirelessly for days to form a thicker skin and not absorb your negative skin, and I am still working to not hang in the vacuum of lifeless mornings anymore. Every time I see you, I still struggle to not let the words roll off my tongue for I am obedient to the unvoiced command of my demur.

Like a summer rain you broke through my cloud of self-confidence and flooded me up with hesitancy. But I am grateful to you, and maybe I would always need a phantom like you, so that I keep marching forward. Maybe I should always leave my wounds open, and rejoice my scars,
for they would remind me how hard I have to hustle in order to reduce you to ashes."