They call it harm.

It was only a modification,
like some shave their hair,
some change the colour -
it was only small things at first,
mere insignificant improvements,
but it became
life limiting,
self sacrificing,
personally damaging -
if I was less, if I was more,  
if I allowed that, if I stopped something else -
and then I wasn't, could never be
that paradox of perfect,
so far from who I am -
so full of blemishes,
each one came
with punishments on a card -
I felt every one.  
I felt her and the morning  
and the sofa and the shower bottle
and the diary and the friend's comments
and the infidelity in the throws of us,
and I felt them too,
I felt the late arrival, the parent's meal,
the video, the cousins, the family prison cell  
in a Trusted house,
by a Trusted pool,
unable to get out.
I felt all of it.  
And I found me,
files and files of me,
the shaming of me,
and others
all stored in folders
on your oblong, blue screen.
It's suffocating, it is,
all this rage.
So when you ask me why I distance,
build walls painfully high.
I'd rather you didn't
make mountains of every molehill,
you know,
there are so many  
on our sterile, nuclear lawn.