Your Bright Wounds

So this is how you nurse your brightest wounds,
when all your bruises bulge like botulin
beneath a field of skin as thin as tin
that’s stretched so tightly and so absolute.
Your scabs, in baths of balmy solutes, soon
grow soft as water leeches gently in.
The woven threads of soiled bandaging
are wads of tenderness, discarded too.
Between the sticks, the grist, and gravel bits
that nestle far below your shiny scars
and fester long beyond their time to heal,
the memories that breed in muscles twist
your sinews ‘round your veins until your heart
is split and every stitch forgets to feel.