Untitled: Intimate Suffering

Image Description, abstract shadows across a white concrete wall, a trio of poems are on it on separate pictures in white text: together they read:

(This is a story and not a poem and this is why: Beginning.)

Once, I found a shard of glass in my rain boot.

I found it with my foot.

3 long blocks from home.

When I could no longer limp

I sat on some dirt covered church steps and

Pulled it out of my flesh

With the tips of my fingernails.

I walked home.

Red seeping from my sock.

(This is an explanation and not an apology: Middle.)

there are things of which we do not speak

the origins of our scars

what we do to make peace with the monsters inside us

Love-

I have been trying to finish that poem for no less than six years

I am good at beginnings and endings

Not middles

This fact is true in all contexts

(This is the end and really the: Ending.)

That night, when it was the Worst

I walked in the rain to St. Mark's Place

And bade them stick a needle in my ear.

I slid him my ID, some crumpled bills

And I was in the chair.

It’s better to do it by hand he said

It hurts less.

He thought I was there for the aesthetic.

He tilted my head

Gripped the soft brown of my skin

Steel pierced flesh and I felt.