Graveyard dirt under jagged fingernails that dug,
tore, as I bit and scratched and fought.
Bloody.
One missing, right on that
long and crooked finger,
joints uneven and broken, but I
died all the same. Split lip and ribs cracking, my spit was
red.
They never told me that
my spit would turn
red when I was
hit
hard enough to rattle the teeth in my skull, the screech of bone on bone a
prayer
to stars erased,
by a street lamp’s light. You call my scars pretty,
but all that pain was never
beautiful to me.
The blood was never anything more than the stink of iron,
rusty and red.
But you trace your nails across the bruise anyways,
my skin a black-and-blue map of a war
fought for the sake of surrender,
hopeless eyes a bombed out shell.
Slowly,
you wash the dirt
out of my ragged knuckles,
and watch as I start to bleed.
I speak, voice nothing but a whisper,
faint and bleak,
but you smile
and hold a cold finger to my bleeding lip
Later. Just,
breathe.