Carved in Bone

You’ve taken a chisel and engraved in me
Words of your sick mind.
So that I still bear your battle scars
Even after all this time.

You’ve carved the ivory that keeps me whole,
As a fiddler might whittle a fife.
I look at these marks and know I’m condemned
To carry them the rest of my life.

The ridges are uneven, deeper in places,
Obviously done by hand.
They show the side marks of clumsy brutality,
Clearly the marks of a man.

To scrape them away, I’d be a fool,
For only the deeper they’d sink.
Twisting and turning, like fire still burning,
Tied to me like chains of a link.

Blood rushes to heal the spots
Filled with marrow no more.
But figuring out just how to heal,
Is like building the house after the door.

My soul is tainted with your kiss,
Ill at the thought of its home.
As it cries out and tears at itself,
Desperate to sand off the bone.

My lattice is burning with the words
Damned to stay at my side.
As my skeleton cracks and clatters and clacks,
Drowning through @#!*% and high tide.

These twisted worlds I turn and trek,
Becoming only more alone.
Waiting and writing and hoping for the day,
That I might rid you from my bone.