Injuries

My ankles are burned left and right, and my knees are probably scraped somewhere. I sit straight, not to be polite, but because my spine muscles were ripped—in a car wreck. Everyone was all right. But I still feel it when it rains.

And since I was eleven, my wrist snaps like this SNAP Every. Day.

And my cat has scratched me one too many times. Lovers see my skinned back, and the scars of my arm or the twitch behind my left eye. But no one notices my split *******, the one I broke in half. And I have no scar where my heart shattered in my late teens. Or on my lips from bile on that day, this day, yesterday, or tomorrow.

You cannot see the death of my loved ones from my skin, and my ears don’t bleed from broken promises. My eyes aren’t forever affected by the tears that felt like forever, and my voice doesn’t sound different because I screamed at her one too many times.

I’m not dead because someone else is dead, but sometimes my heart doesn’t feel like it’s there as my injuries reflect my body, they reflect nothing inside.

...

I read at the University of Kansas during their Undergraduate Reading Series. Read more about this event here:

http://shannonathompson.com/2013/02/11/my-undergraduate-reading/