once.

Once you read it back to me, and I saw the claw marks in my own working, the obscurity of my inner impulse, I saw that I was over egged and too gun ho.

I felt inferior, stinted, muddied.

Once you took it back for me and I saw my self incapable, you were unflinching, modest, tangible, against the white background of my pallid complacency.

I felt grateful, useless and spent.

Once you broke off a piece for me,

chewed it and spat it into my mouth, I nodded politely.

I bowed out...

I swan dived and broke my swan neck, sending shock waves to the tips of my toes through my long dancers legs, the queen of the lake dethroned, for lack of poise, after sliding out of her palace on the mud crust crest of a mud slide, flowing like all consuming lava, suffocating the dreams, the thoughts, the soul.

Once you flicked water on my back because the sun had burnt me, and I writhed like a de-limbed spider, but a flicker, deep inside, felt some semblance of peace. Because once, and again, and again, and again, until the end.