Your loving knife finds

a soft opening in me

even through the fog that we

always thrived in.

I know you don’t mean it,

and I’ll hold you and your

ghosts

forever.

You want a new life,

– and don’t we all? –

and I’m too broken

and unclean

and damaged to keep pace.

I’m a deranged machine of a man,

always trying to rivet my skin back

together

to stop all this pain from leaking out of me,

and hurting others.

But I can’t.

And I keep the rivets and nails coming,

they stab, pathetically, into my piecemeal skin,

sometime finding new, pink pieces to cut,

and not the old, tired and scarred areas you know.

So cut me another bandage,

on your way out,

so I can roll on home.