Often we feel fragile, subject to the judgment of others; like a tiny microscope slide exposed beneath blinding laboratory lights.
"The way you are isn't good enough. You're wrong. You need to change," screams our mind.
"Mold!" exclaims the microbiologist.
"Why am I covered in mold?" I wonder.
And so I tear it away; layer after layer, filament after filament, bite after bite; scraping that rot from my skin.
But the pain grows worse, the blood flows endlessly; the pain does not leave, it lingers quietly in the background.
The vivid decay is fading away, but what remains?
What made me bright, alive, has now vanished.
I lie exhausted upon your glass carpet;
Dying, drained, yet without imperfections, or at least I will be, once I heal.
Time passes, and I remain there, inside a box of tiny specimens, each one examined, each one withered.
I lower my gaze, and there I see it, motionless, gleaming: my skin. It watches me impassively, almost with a knowing wink.
An ever-shriller chorus of voices fills the room; an exhilarated crowd comes rushing in, panting.
"Gold, amethysts, quartz, fluorite! What shades, so vibrant!" shrieks a gray little man hungry for color.
"Such elegance, such luxury," adds a pale woman.
The crowd throws itself across the icy floor, struggling and scrambling like starving dogs fighting over the last carcass.
And I remain there, unable to move, my breath suspended, like a wild hare at the sight of a hound.
I gaze at my dying little body, captivated by the final glimmer still clinging to my hollowed arm: so radiant, so precious, like a pearl sunk deep within the Red Sea.
And only then, only at that moment, did I understand that it could never have been mold.