Prickly tears
threaten to gouge out my eyes
with their jeering calls
about my failing tries.

Tries, you see,
to halt the noise
of dire needs
that cannot be poised.

For this reason
no one understands
the scars and trembling
of the inside of my hands.

Perhaps that level
was never meant to be shown,
and so perhaps my secrets
were once not supposed to be known.

The wisps of each tale
from the embarrassed mouse that is my mind
whisper stories from deep down
to a select few every time.

A bony sliver,
he liked to go first,
to explain the pain
of keeping my lunch inside my purse.

And then the crisp book
opened to show the rules
one like me must follow to live
and have access to all the tools.

Some may call them superstitions
or stupidstitions, for others,
but my mind created them as laws
that I simply couldn’t contain under the covers.

So my cheeks
were shamefully crushed by the water,
as they made their way
to another session with the one-hour doctor.