Black-Fonted Friends

What does it say about a person when their friends are nothing but strings of black font flying across a computer screen? At least the only friends that are relatable. Are they my friends because I can’t see their faces? I can’t look into their eyes and see the lies? I can’t feel the coldness in the room when deception is present?

Long lines of masked faces surround me and have followed me my whole life, coming in and out, dancing the same familiar dance of destruction. I learned to detect those masks at a very early age as I walked through the flames of hell, probably before I could even talk. Yet, how naïve can a person be? How long must I continue to hope? How long must I continue to believe I will one day see something real? It doesn’t exist. Nobody knows how to be real, how to be honest, how to lift their mask, and share their real faces.

Fantasies and fairy tales. Promises mean nothing. Love means nothing. I can’t even fucking define it. I’m just a dumb mother-fuckers grasping at a straw not realizing they’re all burned, they’re all short, the game is rigged, and the words – the black font - is nothing more than another pixilated mask.

My black-fonted friends can type all the hope they want, share all the lies they eat, tell all the stories they can imagine – but they can’t see my reality – they’re not here. I cut off the machine and they go away. They don’t have to look into my eyes, and they can’t touch me. They can’t help me. Black font can’t hold me or lift me off the floor, or look into my eyes or push my hair out of my tear-stained face.

I wish I couldn’t see the masks, the plastic edges digging into pallid flesh, and the smell of the rotting disease beneath it, or the blink of the curser.

My fingers tremble as I hold my mask in my hand. For so long I just wanted to be free, to let the world see the real me. I thought, maybe if it saw my face, not my mask, it would love me. I was so fucking stupid.

What does it say about a person when all their friends are nothing but black font across a cold, empty, screen? Is it yet another self-inflicted cut? Another form of self-destruction? It’s not that there aren’t real people behind the fonts, because there are – just like there are real people behind the masks. It’s because it’s another wall to blame instead of focusing on where the real blame lives – in me. I’m the broken one.

I’m still that scared little girl facing a demon and he’s laughing at me for being daring. Why didn’t I just stay in my comfortable prison? At least I was surrounded by other inmates. My warden was right when he told me that what I sought was just a fantasy, it didn’t exist. Now I’m not even welcome back into the prison.

I close my eyes as I slip my mask onto my tear-stained face, my cheeks pressed against its smooth surface, and I turn it off. I turn it all off, like a power button.

As the music starts, I dance. Watch me as I twirl and dazzle the whole room with my eloquence. I am now the Azoth of life– the elixir, the first principle, the universal remedy, but don’t get too close because I’m also a toxic poison. My direct touch will burn you. I am quicksilver. Don’t get too close, because then you will see your reflection within my eyes.

~Azoth of Life



BTW – this has got NOTHING to do with that lying piece of shit. That person doesn’t deserve one second of my thoughts, not one tap of the keys to spell their name, false or real. I give them not a second thought. I hope they rot in their self-made prison.