These marks of longing. Skin less like cacao,

flesh washed to the root, succulent like crab.

Mother of sorrows, I collect them now.

The way others collect scars on skin, scabs.

The way others collect loss. This is how myth

is made. Not from scars but from what wont heal.

Not from a bag of dime bones and a fifth

but from this. Rankle. Putrefy. Rot squeal.

This and these. I collect. But I won’t show

you. Sleaze tease. I won’t show where I ooze,

levee-like, flood seeping around the seams.

Mine is all that the body spits out. Slow.

Steady. Hard. Myth of loss. Myth of the blues.

Fleshed ooze. Too dazed. To cut. To joy. Flesh screams.