What do you call a scab
That covers the entirety
Of your skin—
The organ that takes
The brunt when everything
Goes well, when everything
Goes to shit—
If the crusted layer
Is another person that left you
The glistening pink underneath—
Nourishing the wound so that it never heals,
Infectious in its zeal to remain wide open—
Deep enough to burn
With the passing breeze
That told us when fall
Was here and night,
Our accomplice,
Allowed us to use her body as a costume
To trick the passersby
And treat those that
Wanted to see if
Whether what they
Were seeing was actually
Happening, victims of peeling layers,
As the diseased cells, no matter how hard
They got, how attached to the skin,
They scarred into something new—
Not better than the soft it ripped—
Uglier but enjoyable,
Recognizable and permanent,
Harder to conceal what we couldn’t contain:
What we shouldn’t have started,
What we should’ve known better,
What we couldn’t continue,
What we couldn’t end,
When our sex was supposed
To be nothing more than fucking
But ended up being more than you wanted,
And not enough of what I needed?
What if that rough protective mange—
The lesions life teaches you with—
Of dead blood dirt,
Clinging onto roots buried
Deeper than sinew and bone,
Was also your heart?
Copyright © 2019 by Jose Oseguera.
