Mine

It was born the day the door shut in his face.
It grew slowly a little pinkish brown thing. Clinging on for dear life. Feeding on him till it grew puffy and soft. He liked stroking it, feeling its fullness.
He knew though it wouldn't be long before it changed colour and left him. He squeezed it and felt the pain surging sweetly through his fingers and tingling down his spine.

It was starting to develop a mind of its own, a tougher skin, even as he tried nurturing it to stay. It was darker now, rejecting his every advance. He invented new means of preserving it -purely for himself; embedding it squarely in the mind, framing the memory in photographs - a souvenir of a day in his life when he had survived, like he never thought he could have.
It had kept him company, it had stung him into feeling when numb, it had enraged him with its purple ugliness sometimes.
How else would he have had the strength to stub out the flame with a raw thumb and throw his head back and laugh in triumph?
How else could he have dressed it lovingly and worked all those intricate patterns in miniature red, it now showed off proudly in the mirror?

He knew now it was a matter of days. It was all the time he had to hold his head up again and walk the tightrope without falling off. Practice hard. Learn not to miss it. Don't look at it. Don't wake up with its ache in your mind.
It's drying up - that precious little ball of fire that nourished you when you had nothing else. Spoke to you when nothing else could. Steel yourself and watch it go.

That beautiful blister you needed so much.

But hey, even if its fading, its going nowhere, only fading into you.