pieces

When she fell for the first time,

Gravel mixed with blood.

With tweezers,

your hands, were the only

patient and gentle enough to pluck every pebble

from torn flesh.

She healed, for the first time

because of you.

But she falls. Again. And again. because of you.

and each time body hits earth,

skin opens, to reveal.

Her falls, turn flesh

into ground, to stumble.

and you become,

the gravel, wedged deep beneath

broken skin.

Tiny flecks of grey,

enter through crimson,

and hide below the layers of translucent white.

Sometimes she swears she can see you,

long after wounds have grown over,

she still feels you, she still knows

you are there.

Foreign material, in the pores of a beating, hurting soul.

Gravel in elbow. in knee cap. in chin. in heart.

Gravel too tiny, too numerous, too hidden

for any human hand to remove.

P i e c e s of you, crawl through her.

they creep into the sacred parts,

into the painful spaces,

no band-aid can guard.

Pieces of gravel,

find one another, deep, deep, deep, in

and claw at her aching chest, to get out.

But it is her skin, that has grown over you,

enfolded you, imprisoned you.

Yet she is the one,

who feels trapped,

by the healing

of her secret hurts.

And every night she wonders,

how much longer you'll live,

wedged under the skin

you once tried to mend.