Shame

You scour my cheeks
with the weight of what I am.
You coil, dormant beneath my skin,
striking when that flash of association
calls your name.
You make past wrongs feel present,
helming waves of self recrimination until I am
stranded in an islet, moated by tears.
You spread like a whisper in the wind,
poisoning all who come to know me
with my shroud of catastrophe, my worthlessness.
Apologies feed you, for how can they salve
the echoing defects which scaffold
this crumbling physique?
I protect you because I deserve you.
Swathing you in my silken addictions,
I bind us together, for life.