hives raze they started showing up pretty late in the game. welts woven by fear. and there was pain where my rib cage made a skin-wrapped stone i could cup with one hand. the beginning of an ulcer, a doctor said. i can still feel crystal holding me where it hurt. eyes the size of ceramic plates. i stopped breaking out in hives the second i got out of that house. a little less than thirty years later, i'm talking about the woman i always refer to by name so i won't have to call her my mother, and this itch starts up just south of my scalp. i scratch what i know isn't a bug bite. that makes it worse. i examine my face in the bathroom mirror. on my forehead, a little left of the median strip, there's a small white knot swimming in a sea of red. the same stain i was saddled with as a teenage scream queen. my body is a time machine, fed by the muddle of my mind. it only works when i don't want it to. 240921 what's it to you? who go blather from