For the Sonorous

I control the dead, a blistered attempt

in finding you after you are gone.

 

You are still here sometimes, morsels and fragments

that split the floorboards and wallpaper.

 

Wholesome memories stashed underneath

the bonewhite crescents of my fingernails,

 

I struggle to gouge out the dirt without

maiming the parts of you I still want.

 

You wasted our last moment together

by admitting you wanted out, but I feigned

 

ignorance and let you go. You now sleep

without a history to keep you warm, awake.

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Braille and Blood

 

She was the first to see the cuts.

Little blood slivers, swollen thin bodies

that lined the underbelly of my arm,

a habit I acquired through second-hand gossip.

 

I remember where she was sitting when it happened,

her posture unprofessional at the computer desk,

French manicured nails writing love messages

to her boyfriend, she was a scene of splendor, a queen bee

that procured the beautiful with a simple touch.

She jumped up and reached for me, the pads of her fingers

reading me like a paragraph of Braille, a language she

mastered in less than three seconds. My skin

shed a layer of iridescence then, a multi-colored confession

that she absorbed as she cried.

 

The years spent hurting me, she remembered with a single touch.

She counted the cuts—over thirty-four—her voice

palpitating every time she realized there was more to read.

I took her hand and used its salt to heal my wounds,

allowing her to soak the history I wrote there, the many days

I spent alone, the battles I could never seem to win.

I let her know that she was not responsible for the cut nearest my wrist

and she wheezed like a deflating balloon, howling

and empty when she was done, hazel eyes that contrasted

with the blood staining her palm. She begged me to stop.

 

I asked her to touch me again, the desperation

to become something beautiful overwhelming me.

Only scabs remained.