your scars

a brutal beautiful

forging through life

even as deaths gristly

hold tries to drag you

down the jagged edges

of scar tissue something

like a zipper you joke will

be your next

tattoo
dust particles

tap dance off the edges

of furniture light splayed

like the sun’s split wide

trying to say ‘look at my

hot stuff babe’ while the

pain rides every

internal nerve
you are wound tight

like when you were young

you’d wrap rubber bands

round your pinky blood

gathering at the tip til it

turned purple suddenly

you’d be afraid it’d drop off

the swelling making it

harder to remove the elastic

your panic a pin prick spreading

swiftly
that sensation is

your every day

the opiates a liquid dip

muting a little more

with every hit

your fingers trace

again those battle lines

on flesh carved

with tiny knives
people dip their heads

over the precipice

just to feel their breath

catch in their chests

you would give anything

to be able to scrabble back

from the ledge