Lotus
"Do you see this?" he cried, shaking his hands to the sky. His wrists dripped blood from the stigmata there (that had always been there).
"Do you see this? Do you see these wounds? Do you want me to pretend everything is all right? Do you want me to pretend like I can forget every day I bleed?" The blood dribbled down his arms, wound around his elbows. He didn't usually bleed. He couldn't bleed out (he had experimented).
"Do you see this!" he cried to the heartless lotus that spread its petals among the stars. "Do you see? Do you see that I'm the only one left to bleed for all of us? Am I supposed to pretend that this is all right? Am I supposed to pretend that this pain will die?" (But of course it wouldn't.)
There was no answer from the sky. They did not see him down below. He was but a memory, a bad dream they wanted to forget. "I won't let you forget!" he swore. "I won't let you! You can't! You promised!" So he turned and burned the world down around him, and at long last they noticed the smoke and came to chase him away from the matches.
But at least they noticed, and as he ran back to his corner of the world, he smiled. He smiled as he collapsed there, weeping tears of blood, holding his head in his arms. "I'm all right," he sang to himself. "I'm all right because they remember. Everything's okay because they remember." And the blood ran down his wrists and turned his white hair the red of betrayal.
