rose bush

dear comely metamorphosis,

 

at first, i stood back and regarded your deep wounds as something part of magic, like the night you cut up your hipbones in a furious fit, the night you targeted your right hipbone with a pink bic razor and then buckled over on the kitchen floor. remember when your mother watched you rock back and forth and said if the pain in your gut doesn’t subside you’d spend the night in the e.r.? remember when you watched the iv drip down, dripping into your own veins and you were finally relaxed? do remember the moment the e.r. technician told you to remove your hospital gown and lift your right arm so he could examine your stomach pains, remember when this exposed all your cuts of makeshift tragedy? do you remember how you told your mother that the cuts were from falling into a rose bush, that the thorns had cut you and it wasn’t a big deal. do you remember when the technician looked at you with eyes wide, mesmerized by your lie? because i do, i remember.

 

in the fetal position i spit out your surgery wounds, my teeth crowded with sutures meant to save you from back pains, from faulty gallbladder, from gallstones, from eating, meant to save you and let the light break through. i had meant to trim all rose bushes and exterminate all thorns. i had meant to save you, but i couldn’t lift a finger to change you.

 

thinking of you always.

 

sincerely,

high school