"Heart Shaped Scars" (7-Minute NaPoWriMo Poem for April 22)

Heart Shaped Scars




All around, the heart shaped scars,
the hidden claws surrounding. She looks out
upon a sea of high wounds, the shotgun shells
clattering at her feet. A world around her
and all she thought to call was the wooden police
who would not come, or when they did they smirked
into the midnight of her stark heart so
used to the abuse. The minute wings
of new flies joined in the cacaphony of chaos,
hard flecks of left still clung to the chipped plates,
a sucking sound harbored the toilet, all the
disrememberings left to overflow in the waste.
She and I, an anomaly, Ten Little Indians
and then us, last. We wove our way out of the maze,
the race behind us now sweating at the gate.
All the ways we played, the shadows on the wall
telling us our future, fortune formed by a play of hands,
the thumb out you show -- or no. All around her,
the shadow play. a Punch and Judy massacre,
all bloodless and wit. The heart shaped scars
of a silent war that punctuate her living, undeclared
in the waiting from birth. Her, her little soldier, all
uniformed and bright.




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written in 7 minutes for National Poetry Writing Month for April 22

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