Old Cuts Leave Scars
You didn’t know then perhaps you never would that the small bits of wounded flesh and soul would bleed and be replaced by scars always tenuous always on the cusp of breaking open and once again pouring red, but last night when the wind was high in the trees shaking them twisting them and owls called to one another from willow to oak I died and there was a clarity of perspective as my soul at first wandered loosed from the leash of the living before ascending descending vanishing. As my spirit wafted through my house ignorant, no, disdainful of locked doors or windows I carried old pain even as I bent and kissed my sleeping wife the sun around which I orbit and felt the warmth of her forehead on my cold lips, and as I leaned to pat my dog fount of unbridled life and love as her tail thrashed the floor an ancient instrument flogging wheat into flour, and I stood and gazed upon the world which had been so important to me computer eye glowing papers piled in order just right dictionaries and style guides to life me up when my mind failed me. But despite the richness of this life revisited all the while I still felt the smallness of the child being mocked the callow young man laughed at as he fumbled with his first love’s dress the poet-in-training being admonished by family that such scribbling was a waste of time in the world of the real. Foolishness it was to hold close such hurts vampires that drained me but now you know when you see through the unblinking eyes of the dead.
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Jaybird
I am retired, having worked primarily as a librarian, but have done freelance proofreading, copy editing, and book reviewing. I wrote some poetry many years ago, but decided it was bad and stopped, since I had other things to do. For the last ten...
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