The Closing Tear

Given how ugly the wound can be,
it's a miracle you ever
love yourself again.

Given what trauma feels like,
I don't blame you for
wishing it away,
selfishly.

You didn't open it,
didn't do this to yourself,
how could you know
how to close it?

That exposed nerve
causes you to twitch
and shudder
with each quantum breeze.

That brushing-by
breaches any security
you thought
you had rebuilt.

But without your will
and without your work
the machines inside you
soldier on.

You can feed them shit
or gold,
but they will turn to the sun
and work.

Soon you can run a finger
over a bump, once a gash,
and blood flows sleekly beneath,
instead of free.

And while it doesn't match,
and is too soft,
too sensitive,
not quite you - 

is there anything so perfect,
anything that means "hope"
quite so much
as fresh, pink, skin?

Commute

Every day
on my way
to work
I pass
the door
we exited
the last time
I held
your hand.

The trip back
down that hallway
was the bus ride
into hell.

Beginning on
a bright fall day
with dinner plans
and concluding
in tears and hatred.

With each fluorescent step
you gripped tighter
while drifting away
and I plodded,
frozen in crisis mode.
Knowing what it all meant.
It was happening again.

I was not powerless
to help it now.
I merely had to
live with
the decision
we made
(Yes, we)
and embrace
simmering, eternal,
guilt and doubt
every day
on the way
to work...

Past the hospital
and relive
your energizing touch
and overjoyed smell
as you held up
that grainy,
black and white image,
and said:

"Right there. That's your baby!"

Bobby Pins

 Years and weeks and months later

I still find your traces

in unlikely places

like bobby pins.

Seeds planted in

my furniture and floorboards

grow evermore,

like the thoughts you still cause me to think.

Like... I find them on the edge of my sink.

My car seats 

and couch cushions 

grow bobby pins;

shaken off diff'rent trees

by fights and long goodbyes,

and flings that taught more than love.

What else would explain 

the way they sprout, unbidden,

hidden like a stray hair

to stay there

until the day where

I needed them least?

Like when, during renovations,

I found one tightly stationed

below the century floor trim

and thought, like a goon,

something to the tune

of "sucks for him."

Assuming some poor guy

committed the same clear cut as I.

Your hair - 

once everywhere - 

has been gone

so long,

but its accomplices, 

these bent, ferrous,

little sticks

still bear the copper taste

of memory.

Once in a great while

they can make me smile

when I find another

and dream that I'll

plant a few, one of these days.

But when these planted seeds

grow to trees,

they bring my intuition

to fruition - 

like the time in the past when I looked forward to what would come.

And years and weeks and months from now

I'll count my graces

to find your traces

in unlikely places,

like bobby pins. 

-Alexander Black - October 2017