I often wonder why medical technology hasn’t made guilt in injectable form. It could come in a syringe, with a shiny new needle, and flood its dark jamun color through your veins. But first, your skin would puncture, and then, not satisfied with a mere hole, a stray hissing comment would rip open a half-healed wound, and you’d be left with tattered skin, hanging frayed from its edges, and a wound that looked aggrieved at being awakened, yet again.
Oh don’t look away, it would say, as you turned to count new leaves on the rose bush. Stay. Survey the bits and blood. Study the massacre sprawled around your feet. And ooze would lap at your ankles as you stared into the distance.
Your hope lay in naiveté, in spanking new beginnings; wouldn’t striding away faster leave time further behind? An unseeing back to the gore and the guts, fractures heal even if they aren’t set right. Pain is your bread basket, tucked under an accustomed arm, a belly-filling helping is always at hand.
And there you were, golf-carting your way through existence, when the dud cracker scorched your stitches, melted them, and you were agape, stark naked, opened up for the ravaging.
So let them be done with it. Money could buy prepared pain. You know what’s coming in the glint of slivered steel. It approaches your flesh, enters at the point of contact, plunges through layers of self-numbed cyclical stories, the ones you cradle in your marrow, will escort to the grave. And the spread begins: deep, dense, soul-sapping. Then you lie back and smile. The drug is warming to your body. You know how it feels. And guilt… feels… good.
You turn the page. It’s a familiar manual. Step 7, (level: easy), heartache. Further down, something will fold, and you’ll limp back to the business of living, but you both know, as do you reading this, that it’s Never. Really. Over.
Wisdom Wears Neon Pyjamas 
Oye!!! This is brilliant, I likes !!!!!!!!!!
This is brilliant!!!!!!!!
Wow. I had to read it twice to appreciate the depth of each sentence. Well done OJ!
Shayne: Thanks, Shayne. 🙂
shayne: Again, thanks.
chandni: That could also mean the writing is really viscous, right? 😉
Oh, OJ, this story
Is so very gory
And because i love purple
Guilt shouldn’t thus gurgle
The world has enough — write pleasant, Pori!
Aunty G: 😆 One must practice all forms and moods of writing. This blog can’t be a straight-up happy fest, right? 😉
Love.
rameyontheroad: 🙂