Black Is My Favourite Colour

Everything that's hurled at me

will have to earn its keep.

The insult.

The envy.

The humiliation.

The things I cannot forgive.

The things I cannot forget.

Nothing gets to wound me

and leave empty-handed.

I will not make meaning

out of suffering.

Meaning is too generous.

I will grind it all into black ink,

wring the bitterness

until it gives me something useful,

and fling it at the page

until the page remembers what it cost me.

I will not turn pain into wisdom.

That would be such a waste.

Wisdom is 

what people make out of suffering

when they want to forgive it.

I don't.

I will keep the wound exactly as ugly as it was.

Then I will give it a punchline.

I will give the humiliation a microphone.

I will give the insult better grammar.

I will give the people who hurt me the immortality they never asked for.

Not as heroes. Not as villains. As ingredients.

Everything gets recycled.

Some things become compost.

Some become autopsies.

Some become satire.

I suppose I have always had a weakness for black.