LACERATIONS
COLLEEN SALISBURY
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.