Clockwork

A youth destroyed in 3 steps,

5 years with

Cruelty like a handprint,

Cruelty in a hug,

Cruelty in a public profession of love.

Some evil looms

Large on the horizon,

Daunting, bearing scars screaming danger

And the penny-suck of copper in the mouth.

Fresh blood from biting the tongue.

An adolescence wasted in 3 steps,

5 years on the run

Guilt like a puppy-mill,

Guilt in a cut,

Guilt in a breeze while 50 doors shut.

Some evil is misjudged,

The error of paranoia that causes

One to flinch at the shadow - harmless

But reach for the snake in the grass.

A life dismantled in 3 steps,

5 years to pull apart.

Hatred like a missile launch.

Hatred in a simple word.

Hatred in a person blurred

                  At the edges.

Some evil is small,

Fitting into cracks, unseen before,

Pushing them larger like a toxic

Kinsugi.

In my nightmares, they nail me,

Wind scared and sobbing to

A cedarwood cross.

To parade my uncovered body through the crowd

As a final act of violation – one last taste of vinegar

Licked chapped-lipped from a drying sponge.

5 years was never enough.

In their daydreams they are

Messiah –

Who stooped so low to

Show favor to me – a kindness

To a brain filled with

Leprosy

And a belly of red wine.

Wallet-empty, I don’t have 5 more years to give.

So now my grief is timed –

Half the clock for my mourning,

Crescent-shaped like

The slash in my chest,

An unhealed wound that cracks open

At their smallest request.

And while I waste my nights and tears

And

                  Years

                  Years

                  Years

                  Years

                  Years.

They long for me to feel one thing:

Grateful.

But in that, they will

Forever lose. Because

Bruised fruit that I am,

Ground-trodden and

Core-rotten.

                  I refuse.