The snowball effect.
I can’t say I’ve been stolen from with a good conscious. I left my doors unlocked. I welcomed thieves with an eager face and a plate of fresh baked cookies at hand. I kept my valuables polished like centerpieces, tempting famished lions with a blood painted carcass, rather than under lock and key.
My instincts, graduated and wise, sent whispers microscopic that seeped into my pours and settled on my nerve endings. Whispers begging to make that first crime be the last. But it just takes one time. One hole in a dam for a waterfall. And like clockwork in comes the second thief! And the third! The fourth! Until the only thing left in possession of this home is my body itself, bleeding. The snowball effect.
My memory fades. My tethered heart beats a new rhythm, for the new resident beneath my blotchy skin. I didn’t know myself well to begin with, but I’d trade a lung for this being I am now. When was the last time I inhaled a content breath, and not one I beat myself to believe was content? A time lost in my memories.
I want my treasures back. I want my unkissed lips back. I want to seal them tightly together until I receive a plaint knock on the door, with a worthy man standing behind. Because those were taken with my belongings. Mindless thieves.
I’m surrounded by nothing, and a hole in my chest contemplating all of this. Not sure whether to frown at my mental demise, or smile that I’ve experienced such a spectrum of emotion in my time here already.
