BY BITEY, who has no claimant I have again found the bridge of fear and I am moving through it. At the end of the causeway is the village of shame, but I am unbothered by my passage and its destination, as I have adopted the terrain of fear and I am no longer confused by its funhouse dimensions. No longer bothered by its injections, nor how its pathogens live in the skin, passing as shapes across the limbs and coiling up around the spine. I have come to live in that house in shame and people have come to know me by it. I am patterned after shame because I have lived in fear far longer than most have even looked upon its gates, or heard them slamming from afar, and so I am queer to them. They're loathsome to me, but hateful and spiteful by way of pure sheltered ignorance, whereas most other inhabitants of shame I despise for more intimate reasons. I hate their celebrations and I hate their politics and I hate them for saying I have no claim on my territory. Some have arrived at Shame without crossing Fear and they wear Shame's stripes and bear its banner and they tell me I have no place here, that I am a tourist, but now I have been here so long that their words pass liike wind in the sea grass.