is back again. It’s a reminder
that I am alive. That to hurt is to feel
what is happening to me. My desk where
I write I can cut with a knife. It can splinter

and mar yet won’t feel anything at all. Only I
will feel the sadness from the beating it took
at my own hands. Only I will feel the long
absences if I chop it down and use it for firewood,

burning my hope in a fiery rage. I will swallow
that rage. And it will cut me
as it descends slowly into the gut - the very stuff
which I live off.