Nobody notices.

I am angry, and sad, and lonely, and wistful.

I am rage and fury, the wrapped-up injury of twenty-three years given voice and form.

I am cold and tired, all my disappointment come full circle.

I am lost and forgotten, disappeared in a crowd of six billion more important.

I am hope starved, waiting for a ship that foundered years past.

And nobody notices.

I can't let them. If I do, it gives them a weakness I can't afford. It gives them a way to hurt me, and I can't allow that.

So I bundle it up neatly, fasten it with buttons and zippers and a thousand tiny threads, and hold it inside, and add when I need to. I put on my smile and tell them I'm fine. And when my bundle finally begins to burst its seams... it's only a headache. I can still smile through it.

(I am love, too, and forgiveness. I am healing and listening and repenting and absolving; I am a thousand things which nobody - nobody who sees my shell - will ever know.)

(I am angry, and sad, and alone.)

Coincidence?

It's amazing what you can come up with when you browse Nostradamus...

Ill wind will blow in the halls of learning
When the king to the west threatens the east,
Red will flow upon the floors
Of the great academy to the south.

The heroes will fall to the side
Even as the condemned man laughs,
In the autumn of the year after
The destruction he has brought about.