The worst part of healing

When the fleshy wound closes its seams and seals its pain
Under the skin, no longer blurting out its bubbling grief
Aggravated by the flexion of movements, I breathe in relief.
I imagine that the worst is over. The damage to one’s soul, however,
Is not the gash, but the scabbing and blunting to the world.
The gauze of self-repair scarred over the spring of words; I
Have no softness in me for poetry and life since it is the
Pliant tongue and lips that articulate, not the calcium of
Teeth. It seems I can only make beautiful things for those
I’m angry with, or speak from the fractures of a heart, or,
As an even more distant memory — from the fleshy hearth
Of love. Without those intense experiences, my hands are dis-
Membered, no dexterity to sculpt stanzas or wield the art of
A brush. Only the primitive waving or hitting of sticks.

I feel like a tired god whose yearning is stunted by
The sluggish eternity. I no longer want anything. I have
Nothing to offer to the altar in exchange for want. And so I wait
To pass this phase too, this impotent healing, this blunt mute
Stump of regrowth.