26 May And still, By Noah-James Bruce
Creased brow and cracked teeth
Biting.
Wrenching skin that pulls from the nail bed,
Till it bleeds.
Red eyes and rough hands
Choking the pen, slicing the paper,
Carving out the answer.
An answer.
Any answer.
Just as long as it’s on the page.
Get it out,
get it down,
get it done.
Hunched neck, hoarse voice,
Scrape out the words.
Maybe the ones they want. Maybe not.
What’s the difference
anyways?
Find a moment, find your breath,
Take it.
Force it down your harsh, hacking throat.
Close your eyes and
Keep on crawling.
Ignore the ache and the stinging in your knees,
So deep there’s hardly a difference
Between you and the pain.
There was a time, years ago, maybe decades,
maybe just in dreams
Hands, just as rough as yours today, washed the blood from your knees.
Soaked it up with her own hair
Wrapped the grazes in bandages, sealed with a chapped-lip kiss,
a shield separating you from the pain
The dirt is packed solid as stone
Between wrinkles, beneath nails, and braided into hair, Sculpting a dense body out of rock,
Grit grinding as joints groan in attempts to move.
And still,
you move.