Tuesday 28 September 2021

Scars

I do not want to heal
Only to be broken repeatedly in the same ways,
Over and over again.

Let me become embittered and thorny;
I can never be naive again.
The pit of my stomach turns on pain
I'm still digesting.

Don't rush me.

Maybe I will, improbably, mature once more into tenderness.
Time may soften my strictures, hardened tissues inflexible now after sustained assaults.

Who knows? Even stones erode.

Jagged edges can become smooth.
Let me take on my metamorphic gleam,
Polished after so much pressure,
Veins showing across my pale, cold being.

The weight I have borne has changed me.
My architecture is petrifying.
My materials are growing more noble,
Resolute and inert in the harsh elements.

My heart has not yet ossified.
In its cage of bone, it flutters on.
In this grand palace of fractures knit together
Joints creak,
Nails dig in,
And knots mark the stories of gnarled growth,
Branching and finding a way.