Somewhere
Forgotten over time
A place that hurt
So terribly an ache
Felt like a fresh burn
Has been badly covered over
With paving stones uneven
Moss and lichen veiling crime
If someone deserning of pain
Saw
They’d immediately recognize
A broken, disturbed surface
Jagged and ill repaired
Lake without mirror
Time, a sad blessing
Where grief is concerned
What you thought you’d never recover from
Cut like totem in marrow’s deep
Doesn’t cease to be devastating
You simply forget the intensity
In order to not fall dead
The lessening is like laying a road, or putting up wallpaper
Layers and layers
You think it’s insulation
In many ways it works
Til something unexpected
Reminds you of how you really are
Behind all those layers
In all those crocheted boxes
Stored in denials, fickle womb
That pain you thought, softened
Is as strong as the day you first felt it
Love
Does not
Just whither up
And die
It twists blade upward
Unwilling, yet deftly
Cannibalizing those morsels
You thought most delicious
Til they become tormentor
Even licking fire, preferable
Than one minute more
The scathing and seal
Of pacts
Made in silent war
Where nothing is said
Hate and love, inside out versions
Of the same, mad drum
Beating relentless
Till one falls, one stays standing
Panting in flickering light
Of damage, desult and sate
On the chapped lips of lovers
Wicked in their apportioned
Vengeance
What you don’t know, can’t know, won’t know