simplicity

is the people that walk in-and-out of those misted glass doors,
drowning their slightly overpriced food in vats of reduced sodium soy sauce. always asking for a little more drink than can be drunk up.

a heroin-ruled lady barely existing in her marred skin, splayed across the hood of my car. never too unreasonable, so long as no one pointed out that she is really speaking to entities no one else can see. or perhaps we just don't care to see.

the cigarette she asked for that I do not have. that little cylinder of cancerous destruction that I will not hold carefully between my lips. I will not leave lipsticked stains on its filter. I will not tongue out careless smoke rings with its burning tobacco. I will not do any of these things because I do not have a cigarette. and that is simple.

what is not simple, not finite is currently in washington, fresh from oregon, still fresh in my mind. it steams there, hot and undisturbed as if it is still. and I feel every fat lip, every stolen breath on my dry lips and my now-clear lungs. a shadow of the pain they feel, but a shadow that is as familiar, relative and empathetic as pain can be.

i've grown up a long time past

it is tender and translucent
like the virgin skin of a
new lesion;

soft and afflicted. unprepared,
unprotected. just like they said
as i focused my gaze
on their incensed countenances.

"you are not ready, not ready
to survive her."

they did not even have to mash
their fingers into my imperfections
to feel the fibrous tissue
swelling underneath that perceived
vulnerability.

it is an oddly unnatural thing, how
naturally the blood clots,
fortifies. rebuilds.
how the scars that line my limbs
lock within the most sagacious
defenses and adamantine surfaces.

the skin on their bodies
is as flawed as
the smooth lids that blink over
doubtful eyes.