When I sit in my living room with my feet up in front of the television late at night, I must look like someone whose been shot all over and come down with fever and must now wait out sleep to see if morning will have him. I imagined myself in this light tonight while trying to ascertain my current state of mind.

Some days are just like that, I tell myself, trying to convince myself that the warrior within me sometimes resists characterization and demands it be left alone in ambiguity to heal, the way I demanded to be left alone when I was a kid and realized nobody was coming to help the beaten kid often kicked aside like a chair in the way.

You had only yourself to rely on in order to survive, so you created a refuge for yourself nobody could invade, a voice calls out from the god-filled forest of my mind. And I suppose that wounded child who likes to narrate from behind the curtain of consciousness, believing it has something useful to impart because it died once, spiritually, is right.

Even today there’s a place I can never let anybody into, even when I want to. I must have decided to make a home so protective not even I could get in.