Hate is a four letter word. Self-hate is two four letter words. Stuck together with a hyphen.

1. Insight. You realize that genuine self-loathing may be misconstrued as a ploy to get attention. Not everyone sees that.

2. Some see it, but don't admit it. Those are the people who are actually trying to get the attention. You are not one of those people. I get the feeling that you'd rather melt into a puddle and dribble slowly toward a sewer than have a person you deem worthier look at you with admiration.

3. Look at you at all.

4. And for that, I would slice a million tiny papercuts into the eyeballs of whoever is responsible for slivering the selfhood of a little boy graced with the wonder to see the sublime in a slug.

5. How few see the sublime, ever, never mind approach it so often that its absence is the anomaly.

6. And beyond: to win its trust, have it feed out of your fingers, take it home, teach it to speak in the common tongue, coax it to whisper its secrets to the world.

7. Your world would kiss you for your gifts to it, if only you'd stop biting bloody your own lip.

8. A gift all its own: lip-nibbling, literal. Deliberately. With a tug of the hair, and fingertips pressured upon the pulse-point in the neck.

9. An undeliverable promise, to be recompensed with an eternity in tacit understanding.