My true thoughts and feelings were etchings in sand the storms of my self-hatred regularly swept away and made indiscernible.

You knelt there, blasted by the winds, stung and wounded. You knelt there, bitter winds scouring and bruising you, and tried to read what was written there before it could be erased.

You strained to read the words, obscured almost as soon as they appeared. You endured that violence, that insensitivity. Perhaps you were able to read some of what was there but, in the end, mostly what remained was sadness.

Sadness and your wounds.

Sadness and my wounds.