When Scars Speak

I live on a midriff.
I'm a souvenir of a birth
twenty five years ago.

I zigzag down a cheek.

I'm the evidence

of a knife-fight,

just last year.
Once I could burst
into flame with just a touch
but I'm calm now.
The embers are faces.
The ashes are spread
throughout this world 

I'm a story teller.

I say to you tough guy,

I can eat pain.

I'm supposed to grow
more invisible with the years,
though maybe that's indivisible.

I just say that

as long as I live

I will be the unsmoothable join

of anger and terror.

And I've got brothers and sisters
up and down two arms,
I've got a second cousin
crisscrossing a heart.
Better than that,
I've got a body hanging off me
that was a billion or more scars
in the making.



--John Grey