Go into your closet and find the oldest piece of clothing
you’ve got. Close the door behind you. Turn out the
lights. Stuff the fabric into your mouth, as much as you
can, until you almost gag. 
And then scream. 
Scream as loudly as you want to, because no one can hear.
Scream until your voice dries up and your throat feels like
somebody’s raking leaves inside it. Then, calmly hang the
clothing back up, smoothing out its wrinkles as best you
can, hiding the evidence. Walk out of the closet and turn
out the lights. 
Walk over to your mirror. Examine yourself. First the hands,
the long, thin fingers on the wide palms, the neck that has
never once snapped under the weight of your head, the arms
and legs that successfully motor you throughout your daily
activities with a minimum of difficultly. Peer into the
mirror, leaning closer, until your nose almost touches the
glass. Scrutinize every pore of your body. Try to find out
what part of you it is that seems to make everyone think
that you’re fragile. 
Give up twenty minutes later, content with the fact that
your wrists seem to be holding up nicely, that there are no
fault lines slicing your face into two diverging halves. Sit
on the couch and wonder why, if you are so solid and well
put-together, that everyone thinks they must hide the ugly
things from you, or else you’ll shatter. You see no
evidence of such. Never once before in your life, when
presented with unfortunate news, have you fainted or had an
arm fall off. You have always managed to take the news in
good stride, maintaining if not necessarily your dignity, at
least your physical health. So why is it that people try so
hard to protect you? 
There can’t be any other reason. Think to yourself that it
obviously can’t be your emotional health the others are
worried about. Remind yourself that they never seem to have
concerned themselves with that in the past. Reason with
yourself that, if not your emotional health, than it must be
your physical health they worry themselves with. Stand up.
Go into the bathroom. Take your own temperature. Remark to
yourself that it’s a perfectly normal temperature to have.
Scratch your head and wonder aloud what it is that they are
thinking. 
Let it annoy you when they treat you like a little child,
one they think isn’t old enough to hear bad news. Remember
the little girl you saw playing in the parking lot of the
hospital once, while her father and mother fought about
whether or not to tell her her grandmother was dead. 
“She is too young,” the woman had said. “It will only
hurt her.” 
“It will hurt her anyway, when she finds out from somebody
else,” the man had said. “She will feel like we betrayed
her.” 
Pick at your bedspread. Betrayal. Resist the urge to look it
up in the dictionary, since you already know what it means.
It hides under the guise of love, or sometimes of cowardice,
but it always reaps the same results. Know this. Remember.
It is important. 
Resist the urge to call them all, even the ones on your
side, to tell them you already know. That you found out all
by yourself, despite their best attempts to dissuade you.
Tell them that you’re still in one piece. Resist the urge
to scream at them that it would have been better if they
just told you the first time around. Resist it. Go back to
the closet if you have to, and stuff your mouth with cloth
until it all dries up and leaves you dry as a bone. But do
not tell them that. Make them happy. People like it when you
let them think that they were right. You don’t need to
break a bone to do this. You only need to pretend that you
are what they know you to be. 
Look at yourself in the mirror, feeling the pain seep
through the inside your your body, crisscrossing little
fissures under your skin. Break for them. Watch as your
fingers fall off and your stomach bursts into a million
colorful pieces. 
Shatter. 	
But don’t scream.

::this isnt exactly a poem, but it was going to start out as
one and it turned into this instead, not sure what to call
it thought...::