Do your scars ever insist
That you touch them?
Do they hover above your skin,
Just so you'll scratch them?
Like maggots
Crawling over a carcass
Wounds that will never close
The burrowing mouths
Leave permanent trails
Because the flesh is dead.
So contrasting,
The pink of healing
That was once an angry scab.
But you scratched at that, too,
Because it stuck to your body
Like some parasitic tick.
And I wonder now,
If the circles of scars
That trail down my forearm,
Are like a line of dark ants
That will follow me forever.
Or if in their ugly hatching,
I can see metamorphosis.
But in the corner of my mind,
I know
They will always follow.
And in the corner of my room,
I hear the buzzing
Of a fly.