Castle of Needles

I could put myself in any situation I wanted, with words alone. It’s the blessing and curse of calling yourself a writer. If I were to say that I finally found someone just for me, there would be nothing to refute that at all. Alas that my own heart has decided that my life must be all truth and very few lies. I’m not, as they say, a very direct individual. Not even looking in my mind’s mirror am I looking straight ahead. My eyes are always closed, or downcast, perhaps from time to time pensively looking upward on the steps of harpsichord notes. It is a sad state of being when everything around you reminds you of that you have yet to accomplish, or how much better those around you are than you yourself are.
I suppose some people would think that reaching out your hands to a castle of needles means that you’re sick, looking for something, anything, to hurt you. The truth of it is, though, most of the needles you hardly feel, noticing not until you’re bleeding rivers (and finding yourself slightly disappointed that the wound itself is so small). Saying this, I have still the vanity to wish the needles not to leave marks on my hands or anywhere else, after the wounding is done.
Sometimes, putting your hands where they don’t belong becomes more of a compulsion than conscious thought. Your eyes glaze over, your body knows it hurts so well that you’re biting your lip…but your hands won’t stop. They just take that blade over your skin over and over again, until finally, like a cold snap dwindling into a haze, your mind screams, oh, fuck!
And you’re left with yourself all over again, or trying to figure out what that self is.
Aha, you say, but everyone has a compulsion to do what they shouldn’t do, to put things where they don’t belong, but not all of them hurt. I concur with you, whoever you are, but at the same time you must wonder how many people do so because it hurts. Not because it gets them off or makes them scream, but because it makes them feel something other than empty, even if it’s just empty and needing a bandage.
Another thing, too, is the wounds that we don’t want to remember are always the ones that end up leaving marks. From that one time that you were in a good mood and accidentally slashed a knife across your hand; the mark that reminds you what a stupid, goddamned person you are. You’re a person, but not like those fragile people whose fragility makes them beautiful and wanted like butterflies…of course, in exchange for beauty, you don’t have people wanting to dip you in poison and put you in their own castle of needles.
So, you want to know what living in a place like this is like? It’s the feeling like you’re losing more of your soul when you breathe in than when you don’t; like you’re expecting, maybe even wanting, your body to fall away like cheap plaster, leaving the smoke of your soul to the wind—with every single breath you take.

But, you have the vanity to want something about the form to be left behind, even if it has to be memories alone.

It’s wondering what kind of corpse you would leave if fate decided to dip you in poison; if people would even bother to look at it. It’s seeing yourself pinioned by the reasoning that you don’t know what you really want, but it sure as hell isn’t this.

It’s seeing those needles in the wall as more than what they are, just because they’re silver and not that damnable gold that everyone but you seems to have at their fingertips. (And besides, if someone offered gold to you, you’d never take it; you want the moon and stars, not empty promises.)

It’s knowing your theme song, if you had the gall to choose one, would have melancholy, but in a stately fashion. We’re not whiners in the castle of needles, silver thorns on roses all.

It’s seeing yourself in a dress of those needles, cold against your white skin, but they never hurt you unless you want them to.

Sometimes, you want them to. Oh, how you want them, and ah, how they do.

Thin, delicate and painful, just like you.