Stitch

I try and try to tear myself in two;
it’s hard to heal from hunting after hurt.
The upstart stitch still steadily appears
and winds my wounds up like an unseen wife.
My body knows me better than my brain:
degeneracy hasn’t yet dulled down
the knowing needle nested in my nerves,
nor thinned the thread that doctors all my threats.
Through all my craven cringing, crying wolf,
the mindless mechanistic miracles
of human flesh unflaggingly unfurl,
rending to rags the poor mind’s tyrant reign.
Only the lurid lines of scars are left
as clues to self-inflicted cruelty.

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