I am dissonance.

I am a set of six out-of-tune strings with no melody, no rhythm to go by. I am ivory tiles that have long since forgotten the pressure of fingertips that coaxed comprehensible harmonies from my soul. People tell me I am wrong, everything about me is wrong, and I believe them.

Well, I make it look like I believe them. Like they've...defeated me, somehow.

The world is wrong, though, and I am right.

And I will never stop believing it, because John says it, and John always speaks the truth.

If someone so pure, so honest, says I am right, then I must be.

I must be.

They tease me about my lack of muscle, and my freakish intellect, my lustrous curls. They throw verbal missiles at me, projectiles of 'Freak' and 'Faggot' that catch me in the gut, unfailingly resulting in crimson receding into the drain of the bathroom sink, mixing with the faintest drops of black eye pencil.

I am dissonance. I am invisible. So undetected, even in broad daylight; only streetlights notice me.

John is the exception. Once he's walked in, the bell can't be unrung, this alarm can't be unsounded. John is the one body of life on a desolate planet, he is the only one.

The only one who ever understands. Anything.

And, amidst a crowd of so many others – so many others – he smiles at me.

I don't know why he smiles at me, but he does. A smile of just precious metals that I want to lock up in a vault for myself alone.

He's never even spoken to me before now. And he smiles at me. In bustling hallways. Across playgrounds and football fields. Through music room windows.

Every day.

$∆L

somehow, all of this mess
is just an attempt to know
the worth of my life
made of precious metals,
precious metals,
precious metals inside