Never Say You're Sorry for the Waste You’ve Lain, Because We’ve All Got Marks to Carve.

There are varicose sidewalks beneath my skin
to a city whose subways thunder disappointment
with the systolic rhythm of missed opportunity.
White blood cells disinterestedly wave away from the bleeding wreckage
beautiful tourists armed with spray paint and misplaced vendetta:
“Move along. There’s nothing to see here anymore.”
Workers fill abandoned atriums with cement.
I point left, tell them, “You missed a spot.”

The woman in the back listlessly sings “Is that all there is to a fire?”
She dresses in apologies, living her life with her suicide on pause.
She's earned the immune system of a trailer park, suffering disaster with duct tape and inertia, defying guilt, derision bouncing off her foam trucker hat, using self-acceptance like judo in a gunfight.
Call it obstinacy,
call it laziness
she’s not going on anywhere.
“This is what I am. And I can’t be ashamed of that anymore. The view of my shoes never changes and you deserve to look me in the eyes to see how your scorn is received.”

The future seeps through the vents and speaks like the backhand of God,
“There’s a horizon in this night, so squint harder, boy.”
leaving guiding trails in countertop dust of dead skin and the skeletal remains of hope long since calcified.
And I file down my scars,
because this nerve can never be raw enough
and,
Mom,
they tell me I clean up pretty well.