There is a rot so deep inside me, I wonder if I was born with it.
Is it mine at all? Did it choke me in the womb as the cord kept me alive? Pushing and pulling, a premonition for how life was to be? Did they have to cut it down the middle? Leave half of it to my mother, the other half passed down to me as inheritance? Did it leave her feeling lighter, or like all wounds, did hers fester, worsening the ache?
I don't know how to carry it. It stains everything I touch, eager to decay things before their time.
It decays me too. Has been since my first breath. I've never known a life without this rot. I have watched my life pass through blood stained eyes, every tear I wiped replaced with a trail of red born of my hands. Sometimes I wonder if it is of my own doing. Did I stab myself as a child and forget it as I grew?
What good are forgotten memories though, when the blood remains and the rot spreads?
