LACERATIONS

Being abandoned by you is like running

a little too close to a white pine. Pieces of bark break

through my skin (dead cells), unsure if they’re mine

or if they belong to the mixing fibers from the aging

evergreen. If I knew what appendicitis felt like, then I think it would

be this. Unanswered whys and hows, I ended

up wishing you never existed. But then I realize the parts of me

exposed from the collision can taste the spring through

the breeze wrapping around me as if I were that little girl

again. They can see the way the grass will feel after it

has been cut, when the dead shrapnel settles between

the dull blades. The smell of flames dancing towards the sky,

trembling between atoms. Oxygen carried in the red,

breeding new life to the surface. I am so much more

open.