Metaphors Bleed

Even metaphors bleed.

That is why I trust them.

Because they do not arrive clean.

They come dragging the night behind them
carrying feathers
carrying bandages
carrying the red little truth
plain language was too afraid to touch.

A wound is not only a wound.

It is a mouth
the body grows
when silence
has stayed too long.

And language—

poor thing

beautiful thing

keeps coming back
with blood on its knees

trying to name
what touched me

without becoming
the hand
that hurt me.

But this is what I know.

Everything I make beautiful
has first passed
through the wound.

The bird.
The night.
The bandage.
The sternum.

All of it
came from the same place.

All of it
left red.

So no

I am not cured.

I don’t even know
if I want to be.

I only know
the wound keeps opening

and language keeps entering

and somehow

I keep calling that
survival.