Mushrooms, Splinters, and Thorns

Solace in Scars

Solace in Scars

In front of Riverside Church
on Riverside drive,
you glanced in my direction,
your eyelashes piercing through
the frigid wind,
your lips curling in crisis,
two rattlesnakes
ready to strike,
and I felt the icicles in my bones
since it was mid-January,
retrospective, in white.

Your rage is poetry,
a kind of lust,
or sadness,
maybe…
but there’s solace in scars
and I’m not troubled,
for you got no one left
to dishearten now.

What was there is a clichéd blur,
a memory alien,
for the scenery’s changed,
I’m no longer the same,
no more stuck in Woodstock,
vulnerable with faded pride,
no more sagging deep
with visible pain.

After all, I had to learn
a trick or two to survive
and I ride the changes now;
although, no place feels
far enough away
from you.