Milk - A Poem

I don’t know how I let it happen, but I did.

I’ve let you take the tongue from my mouth.

What a callus man you are

To leave me this way, all alone, with nothing to say.

I’m trying to whisper against the wind and the noise and yells and I think

“Your mouth is empty, your head is empty, don’t you dare say a fucking word”

Sounds like your voice, doesn’t it?

How angry can I really be? Not when I let it happen.

I did.

I’ve clawed the marked skin from my bones

and I’m scabbed over, but I know they won’t heal.

I have never been good at leaving them alone.

Pick pick pick until it’s fresh again and I scramble for something to catch the blood before it drips.

But I’ll ignore it. Dripping down my body, I’ll ignore it. I’m a shark, stop moving and I surely die, so I’ll ignore it.

When I stand under the weight of my own terror, which is so palpable I can reach out and run my fingers along its scaly skin, I don’t know how I walk how I step how I move at all

Time passes beside me, I notice. All around me, all the time, it passes. I must have moved right? If I look around, it’s different. So I moved. I didn’t need my tongue to move, or my legs to work or my skin to heal.

All the purples and greens you left behind are faded to white, creamy, healthy white.

I’m Milk again. (Don’t open the carton, though, I think it’s spoiled.)

I let it happen, I did.