An Echo on My Palm – A Poem

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“You make every situation worse.”

I know that the words

are not meant as they sound,

that taking them literally

could be my undoing.

Yet,

that is just what my brain does

when the words make themselves heard,

having hidden away in the soup of my mind

when the hurt was too

BIG, fresh and new.

As they emerged,

the words carried new meaning,

even as I took them out of context

by viewing them under a certain kind of light.

I go over every situation that we have shared,

playing them on repeat in my skull,

watching as the memories play and replay,

wondering how my presence there

made it all the worse for you.

I pull a memory out of the film in front of me,

watching as it performs its cloud dance upon the palm of my hand,

its black and white colours a whisper on my skin.

When it disappears,

fading back into the film catalogue my head holds,

I am left with the echo of joy

that shows me I’m holding onto the words the wrong way.

I let them go and a drop of blood

f

a

l

l

s

from where I held on to

the sharp edge of a Y too tightly,

and I feel a moment of pain

as an S slices though my palm,

leaving a drop of blood

on my skin.