Impossibility.

Everything is always different with you.

I would that I could will you into a soldier of my own battle tactics...whittle your mute point - always sheathed - into something infinitely more blunt.

But there is no changing you.

It always begins with a splinter. With a small injury you derive from the ceaseless sawdust I rattle off in oblivity, six syllables to the second.

The point of entry is unremarkable - a thin layer of skin acting as trapdoor to the earthy intrusion. Mole-like, it burrows deep into your flesh until tightly lodged, and invisible to the anxious steel tweezers I set a-pinching. I am adept at getting under your skin.

Cannot this be the end of things? If only you would alert me to your casualty, that you would holler and scream, your face a blueberry mess. If only you would force your hand before my face and have me study every tender blemish. I'd have the mongrel out in a second!

But you prefer to hide those hands inside kid gloves that bunch, childlike, into fists within the denim walls of your pockets. You allow the splinter to fester into a vividly crimson Vesuvius - just as lethal to the citizen. Infected, the hand swells monsterously, until your entire, unfamiliar self pulses with septicemic rage. It does not become you.

Frustrated and with sharpened silver at the ready, I begin to dig, desperate to loosen your tongue.

Your hurts become evident, they become airborne as you spit hardened chips at me to catch me unaware. You aim for the eyes, but I assure you, they are already incapable of seeing. Before long, and long before I have a hope of curing you, you harden against me into wood that bruises my hands as they reach out to you.

You are angry - drained of yourself, and dry enough to please an eager tinderbox.

And I - I am left, battered and unhappy, in wait of your fickle magnanimity.

What exactly have I done to you this time?