[click to edit name]

Untitled Part 1

My hands have never smelled clean. Always of rust or herbs or sweat or others but never of soap.

My life is the same.

Once I asked a close friend to rename me. I am not my name.

She suggested Charlie, and it fit, and I told myself to tell the world my name was Charlie, and I thought on it and thought on it and thought until my cheeks were burning and I couldn't look at the name Charlie the same again.

I am not as beautiful as I think of Charlie. It fits no more.

Now I await another, plainer name. [click to edit name] is my title now. But never what the people who scream useless, scathing words through the drywall have named me. I am not theirs. I am my own.

They burn the walls with acid and tear down my refuge, the place I go when I need to be alone. They think my isolation is a cry for help, but I only need help because of them. I wish I could see what the walls really look like now, under the paint, but only they can, and they refuse to acknowledge it.

I press a sticker to my face, and the adhesive, or the contact, it itches, but I cannot scratch it off. It is the only thing that keeps me clothed. My clothes cannot provide as shelter anymore. I have grown into them now, and I cannot hide my hands that smell of salt inside my sleeves anymore.

My friends have always wondered why I wish to stay. I never want to go home. They have refuge, they have locks on their bedroom doors. The people sometimes are even their refuge. But I have never been that way. I have been alone since I can remember, hiding behind stickers and strange words and shirtsleeves, unable to escape and be independent.

The woman leaves everything open: the doors, the toothpaste, her own mouth.

The man keeps everything cracked, waiting to push open and spill its contents.

I keep everything closed.

Except now. Now I write when I have emotions, when I feel.

I open up to the people in my head. They ground me and keep me certain. They promise me they will be my refuge.

They are the pictures and the paintings I store when my brain takes a fancy to them.

They are the colors I want to be, the trinkets I cannot afford and the noise the rain makes.

They are soft and gentle and only hard when they choose to be, not for anyone else.

They listen and when I don't need them anymore, I can push them away and they fade and I am alone once more, with a real sense of existence for a little while longer.

They are the name Charlie, all of them, even the ones not named Charlie, and they are more lovely than I could ever wish to be. They give me a name.

I still cannot hear it, however, past the fog of reality, so I remain [click to edit name].

But I am my own. I am me.