"...... everyone who hates me, knows me well";
I wrote this to a friend, it seemed fairly clever and
I had a point to make about instant this and that.

But as soon as I hit the Send button I realised
the stupidity of what I'd said. For who can know
me well when I stand like a stranger amongst friends?

My face covered with so many coloured creams
and oils that its very shape is lost? Who can truly
know me without knowing of the secret places

where I hide, locked and stacked pile high, the
moments I can never finish and the steps I cannot
take? Who can know me well who knows not of

the tin with six photographs which I can never
look at, but can never throw away? Without
knowing that I sometimes put my hand in my pocket and

find the handshake of a dying man? Or that my sins
are all so small and petty that they shame me with
their lack of consequence, that they torment me like a

stone in my shoe? "... I'm so damned ordinary", I
said that too, just a matter of fact thing but it should
have been a scream. Who can know me well

who does not know that I hate my comfy chair?
The warm forgiveness of my friends? The laughter
and safety that greets me as I rise? And who can

truly say they know me well if they do not know that
sometimes I fear to find that a special person shares
my bed so much, that I have to get drunk to sleep?

Meanwhile children starve.