vignettes

threadbare

I was too young to know
the difference between self care
and acquiescence—
surrender and survival.
I sat in a green upholstered chair,
threadbare
as my dulled heart,
with a bloody stump to share.

But rather than knit together
the severed wire ends
that writhed and sparked
just out of reach,
you cauterized my wound.
Now, there's only a semblance
of the sweeping emotion
I once possessed;
the center of my joy and pain
is only a phantom limb.