Pariah

Smoke and fog corrupt the road
that I have made my home.
I hear nothing but their howls,
loosed like barbed quarrels
from every second-story window.

There is a reason for my indictment
much as there is for their malice.
It is laced in doubt that drags like a millstone
across a path so deeply carved from my footsteps
that I stumble every step over past reflections.

My arms are ensnared in the coils of snakes,
constricting every insight born amidst confusion,
yielding for a moment to exhaustion,
only to begin the suffocation anew.

I don't feel my fingers tracing the walls of homes
that line the streets, nor the pieces
that lodge themselves under my nails.
Flakes fall from incisions made with numb hands,
peppering the dirt that mixes with my blood.

You will aim to make this my Golgotha,
I will make it my everlasting Mecca.