Stop

Stop. My mind is too embattled to let you any closer. Too tangled for you to undo the knots, too painful to cut them loose, too long to start again. My mind makes barriers of string against you looking in too closely. Here of raffia, there of rough rope, here silk embroidery thread, there clear monofilamentous fishing line.

Fishing nets of close woven string woven with sea kelp catching the thoughts before you can see them naked and swimming free from my mind. Before you wrap your grasping hands around me and try to hold my soul, palpating in your hand like a newly removed heart for transplant, weirdly alive and seemingly dead.

Can you feel the lifeblood smeared upon your hands? Because you will have it on your hands if you push yourself on into my mind.

For see, my life is unfolding in the manner of one who drowns.

Tantalisingly fast and creepingly slow. Fast forwarding and rewinding, pausing and ejecting, like a demented videoplayer, my soul unfolds and re-envelopes me.

So many things I want to say.

It spirals round me in bands of rainbow colours. Emotions paint themselves on the walls like some kind of obscene graffiti.

I say nothing.