The Release

No one saw it coming the day I vanished.

It gathered in my heart when I felt the icy tip of your jagged knife pierce

the tender surface of my weary skin.

It furtively transformed itself into an entity unknown

seeping through my coiled veins

oozing through frail membranes

sliding past parts of me that I had never met. 

It twisted and turned and tunnelled its way through pummelled flesh and bones

burning a blistering pathway to the back of my rigid neck.

And there it sizzled

seething

blazing

swelling

pounding my head with incorrigible thoughts,

a pulsating energy so intense that I knew it would soon catapult some estranged

part of me through my very own skin.

Yet at this peculiar moment, I could not help but note my private relish

at the thought of reaching an inglorious point of no return.

I could not wait to be that dazzling explosion.

To watch a thousand fuming pieces of my former precious self dissolve into deadened space.

To feel a thousand pieces of me drift into an ephemeral state of bliss.  Sublime emptiness. 

To have a thousand pieces of me float serenely to the floor

and settle gracefully

into the shifting shape of a shattered shell.