Captain America Poetry (Anything Marvel related, really.)

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes..."

(Wattpad OBLITERATED my formatting, I apologize! It's even worse on the mobile app.)

Recovery tastes nothing like Victory

it is wanting you here and wanting you

dead, wanting your heart thrumming steady

underneath my palm pressed flat to ribs

breaking.

Recovery is wanting my mind on rewind

repeat, fast forward, until the tape comes out

like silly string and gets tangled in the machine

no foreign hands in skull if foreign hands

have nothing to tear into anymore.

Recovery is when I am Machine, heart clicking, eyes

open, never closing, fingers tick, tick, ticking

grease between gears, no sweat on palm

I am not human enough to want to hold

you without snapping your neck.

Recovery is gun shots and explosions ricocheting

from nightmare to nightmare and into waking

world, it is screams trapped in eardrums

unhinged laughter loitering under my tongue

it's 'I'm sorry' on replay, arctic slumber

too afraid to be awake.

Recovery is waiting to feel something

other than the static humming in my

bones, it is waiting for the cold to recede

wanting the heat of summer, wanting the burn

of the sun, wanting to know what it feels like

to be flayed alive because I've been caught

in a snowdrift for decades and I

have gone numb.

Recovery is wanting to know you and not knowing

how to, it is wanting to know the line between Mission

and Friend, you are my friend, I want to remember you

I want you to teach me to hold onto the memories

long enough to relearn how to smile without

baring all of my teeth.

Recovery tastes nothing like Victory,

but your embrace tastes something like peace.