Ed....this means HAIKUS

This doesn't have a title. I'd take suggestions. I'd take any feedback; I just wrote it at work, not wanting to work.



Tell me I'm not beautiful because you don't understand, that when he crushed his fist against my jaw and the socket popped and the bones broke, the angels sang and the rain stopped, I fell to my knees and fell on my palms, and smiled a crooked, slack-jawed smile to the saving grace of hot summer tar on the hot summer street because in falling, I felt.

In 12-18 month intervals he was a number in an unsuited uniform in a yard. During the first, I felt too much. After the second, the third, the forth, I felt nothing at all. The burns healed, the cuts healed, the fractured bones bonded. During the second, the third, the fourth, since no one else would, I ran my own fingers along the scars from my sternum to my breast, from my breast to my belly, across my belly, hip to hip, marking the space where only one grew and no more would grow.

No more. Not one.

No one but the creator would love such a mess, could let his hands graze the collection of scar tissue which became my home.

Welcome home.

12 months.

He created me and I am his. Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the trinity of Drop-out, Pusher and Corner Shop Lord.

Oh Lord.

Welcome home.

Create me anew, touch my soul. Through my jaw with your fist, through my chest with your steel, to inner chambers of my heart, the inner folds of my mind. Where you are sixteen and I am fifteen, and when I play-fight and push you, set my soles to run away, you set me on a stoop, align our eyes and say: Stop, for real; I just want to hold you.

Stop.

Then you left again, 12-18 months. I was stopped.

You came back and I hadn't moved and you had been moved, so there this life began. You held me. You made me. My nose, my jaw, my womb, my toes, my tongue, my teeth, my voice, my sound. Everything re-formed.

Today I repent, for wondering if it could have been any other way, wondering if me naked could now look any other way, my heart full could now beat any other way, if I could have been created, crafted and sculpted, painted and perfected by hand, any other hand.

Tell me I'm a pity because you don't follow. Tell me my shame because you don't see. Tell me I'm not beautiful, because you don't understand. Tell me I don't count because you don't comprehend. That you created him, with your hands. Lashed his back, tore his tongue, boxed his ears. Filled his mind with sediment which settled exactly as you planned. Don't shake your heads and your self-righteous fingers at me, I stopped and I stayed and I tried and I gave.

12 months. Welcome home.

Because at 8:02 on a Tuesday night a college boy put his hand up my 17-year-old skirt and at 8:02 he turned the college black and red of his soon-alma-mater, and at 8:03 he grabbed my wrist as yours were in cuffs and he pulled me away as you were driven away for 12 months.

12 months at 18 is like 9 months from conception, life taking form. 12 months at 17 is like 11 months from birth, sounds taking form.

I tell him he is beautiful, as my split lip drips drops of my hot bloody words on your porcelain hands, because I understand. I was made to understand: that you gave him no choice, so you gave me no chance. I understand.