Allies in Alleyways

I think my heart’s too hurt to walk these streets with company. I think I’d better wander alone. Those things lurking in the alley way don’t haunt me the way they do, you. They’re almost good company for me. And I have little left to say aloud. Few words left to let slip out. And yet I am loud; chasing my inadequacies with gesticulation, and hoping it goes unnoticed. And it does. You mistake my conciseness for brusque. You take my distractions as stories. But I am nothing; just a charade of sin walking in human clothes.. But I don’t walk  the path well. I can’t fake this animal perfectly enough, but my inaccuracy is brushed off as elusive and strange. I can’t say I am not, for this skin no longer feels right and I wish I could rub it off or down to fine smoothness with sand paper. Strip away the years of damage and walk free of impurities. But I am made of them now, they have crept deeper and deeper and eaten away at any semblance of sanctity. Now I am the disease I no longer have. Now I only infect others with my presence. And sickly, sometimes that’s all I wish was left of me: scars and stains on the hearts of people that never loved me.