Broken Words

And she is broken,
Down
Tattooed words on her back
Where she can’t see them
Like bruises
Hidden to hide the feeling
Of not feeling
But fearing
Hidden behind laughter
That smile
So we can’t see you
So you can’t see you
And the needles through you
Stitches
Pulling you apart
While you holster your gun
When you should be killing
The madness that is in you
And on you
Taking your breathe
And your body
To places you’ve already been
Places
She has already been
Places
You all burned pictures of
But that are still burning
Charring the edges
Of what you needed
And never said
Charring the edges
But not the faces
That are all too familiar
When you walk through the door
On to eggshells
On to thin ice
On to the cracked glass of picture frames
Waiting to cut you out
By keeping you in
And bleeding you quietly
And slowly
Until you have cut yourself out
From the inside out
To make paper families
That hold hands
While strung across windows
That let in the light
Until it burns the edges
Of the those paper fingertips
Until they can no longer hold on
Until it is you
Crumpled on the floor
You
Crumpled in a corner
Writing words where he cannot see them
Until you cannot read them
Until they are just scratches
On your skin
Colored by the sense
That this started before you
That this
Was not written by you
But on you
Before you could read
Before you knew the words
Colored by the sense
That you never were
Because of him
Because she and him
Never stopped
And you
Were swept under rugs
And I am sorry for that
For the ink
That I cannot scrub off
For the needles
That I cannot clean
I am sorry
For the way they sewed you back up