Inescapable

Stop.
Please stop.

Their gunshots
like the drops
on her forehead,
Cold and penetrating.
She shut her eyes
and her mind
between each:
bracing herself for the next,
steeling herself.

She had, for a long time, liked to think that her mind was indestructible
But slowly, slowly
she was learning otherwise

She turned the knob, just slightly, so the faucet would slowly and consistently drip fat, cold drops. She stepped over the edge and laid on the bottom of the tub so that her small body would be aligned to let the drops fall precisely on the imagined x in the center of her forehead
drip
As the heat was drawn from her body and her bones became self aware, her eyes no longer saw the bathroom and her ears no longer heard the silence.
drip
She was elsewhere,
this child,
fascinated by torture
And slowly, slowly
she found that a mind,
like steel,
will corrode
given enough water
and time

drip.

And now
their gunshots and you
surfacing in the ocean of silence
A jolt
in a dream
bringing back all the memories and realities
Like an earthquake splitting the surface
simply to remind the world
of its layered existence
sewn together.