Some scars got a paragraph,
some, a page.
I’m not much for back stories,
I’m mostly conflicted
within the epilogues.
I’m a book bound in leather,
there were no other options.
Weathered by the ravages of sin
upon my skin
many self-inflicted
some accident
and some inherited.
There are no pressed flowers
between any pages.
No butterflies.
But at chapter four
there is a praying mantis
that I flattened
when I realized there were no gods
who listened.
Prayers went unanswered.
It looks thick, now
the mantis, from the side.
Paper thin from the front, like me.
So I named it after me; bookMark.
It’s all just me, pages
curled like sinew under my skin.
Not so much hidden, as disguised
as a life recklessly lived.
Tattoos look like stains
now that I’m old.
Partial pains that I shrugged off
back then, when
they were receipts
of when a hurt was momentous.
So many picture-words worn
and now worn down.
Age is just a number, perhaps, but
it’s the rapid open and closing
of my ten crooked fingers.
Arthritic screams, louder
than any words ever written.
~
Give me your book, for a night.
Take mine.
We’ll share a moment of silence
for one another’s old wounds,
as we unhide from our clothes.
Somewhere in the kindness
of dim light we will find a place
where we feel an equality.
Like commonly skinned knees
back when at twelve years old
we fell off our bikes.
I didn’t know you then.
Wish I did.
Since, we have a few to compare; scars.
We can see, and share a small smile
and we can touch where the pain
has long gone away.
Our wincing will only be
from being seen, as scarred.
Pages cannot be torn out.
That absence itself would be a fresh wound.
And the crumbled up paragraphs
in the hand, are not so easy
to just throw away.
So accept us, as we are,
me, as I do you.
After all, we are new to this day.
I didn’t bother to iron my shirt
because you’re about to see wrinkles anyway.
Am I old?
I wore the ancestors of these jeans
back when wranglers were just cowboys.
Under my clothes,
all the stitches fading here and there
upon my frowning skin
look like abandoned train tracks
that used to go to a long ago town.
A ghost town, called youth.
The prices we paid, from that escape,
blood dried long before the pain.
But damn, what a mess
on our psyche.
From that first book;
the book of ache.
~~~
I love this write. The whole idea of it too.
Plus the title is just epic. lol
I will gladly share my book with you, but you’ve already read it. But here’s something new!
One day I was riding a ten speed bike that was way too big for me. So big I had to lean side to side when peddling
because my legs were too short.
I was so excited. My friends had already mastered it.
Even figured out how to change the gears and picked up speed! I felt invincible with my ponytail swaying in the wind!
On my way back home I took a turn way too fast and the bike slid over while I was still on it. I skinned my knee really bad.
You should have seen tiny little me hobble back home with my bike and bloody knee.
The point of me telling you this is because of your picture!!
It’s not a ten speed but that is how my bike fell over.
My scar healed up pretty good. Don’t even see it anymore but I remember how scared
I was when I fell:)
Again. Love this write and you!
There’s a message to the picture I posted; Just when the road gets rocky, the training wheels fall off.
I woulda kissed your bloody boo-boo. After piggy-backing you home!
Well, you’ve seen my bunches of scars huh…and stuff.
I had no idea how this write was going to go, besides a few lines to build from. The ending sells it to me, though. Almost like doing another write with it. Yeah?
And hey, we are combining our “books” nowadays. What a great story!
You make me more interesting LOL.
No. You make me more interesting!
You are a blessing. You make me so happy to pick up my pen and write.
You really do:)