Monster

When it seems everyone wants something from me

like vultures picking the scraps off the corpse of a turtle,

I shrink back into my shell, my impenetrable armor,

and they kick and pick, kick and pick.

I rattle my guns a little; that usually scares them off,

but every once in a while there’s that persistent one,

that one who thinks whatever I have is just too good to leave alone for whatever reason,

so I explode out of my shell like a million pounds of dynamite,

tearing a hole through the side of a mountain,

guns blazing and muscles flashing with magmatic anger.

I hate myself for days after that;

I never like being reminded of the monster that lives within us all,

waiting to spring out, that last defense mechanism

when the shell and the armor just aren’t quite enough.