I admire the vermillion ribbons laced through my ivory skin, they were embroidered with byzantine gold needlework. I had little of myself left, but I wasn't absent per se, more hollow than anything else. Woefully, the vigor of these stitches seems to be more staunch than your embrace. I avow this and you understand it thoroughly, so you rip apart your handiwork and start over, dead set against my critiques, you prefer my panegyrize. 

Even if I find myself called to abandon this rotation of thread and what I wish was ichor, I know just as well as you do, I am not steady. You will leave me with an elephantine of scars, symbols of my sufferance that are on display to be perceived without context, just a rough outline of whispers we've all heard before. I will be too mutilated for someone to touch, my conscience too blurred to try again. 

So I will lie down and I will be satisfied in our charade. I will wait for you to come back to me, and you will wait for a review of your latest basting. 

Chloe A.