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

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