I was born. Very soon afterwards I met Gigi. My invisible friend.

Gigi, Gigi risen from an imagination which knew not how to replicate pain, for its mistress had not yet had it.

And then I met the kind of pride which infects human flesh daily,yet which had been unable to enter my bubble, my fractured, bewildered soul.

I hurried, oooh hurried, to build and rebuild barriers repeatedly.

But in a heartbeat they'd be

razed to the ground by a man, a

warrior either without mercy or

without perception or without both

as he stole away my friendship as bounty

and, as collateral, left heartache that burnt

down to the hindmost nerve of

my stomach like the kind of acid scientists fear.

Now I know better; I have new friends.

Their invisibility separates me from the recurring knowledge and stored memory of pain.

The guilt of others, their misdeeds towards me, yields renewed innocence in the corners of rooms.

I no longer need touch, sound.

I know they scald me.