keeper of scars

welcome the charred lips and
cigarette tongue that you taste as you come,
dirty and wild.
you’re just that kind of girl, aren’t you?
the kind no one can seem to forget,
but they’d rather not remember, or keep.
you’re just another drip of saliva
that paints their acid mouths, replaceable muscle that
licks the filth from their naked wounds.
you don’t even taste the pills you inhale, and
his scars? you read them like a map while
he tears off hunks of your flesh that never re-grow.
you cringe over nothing except the moment when the bar lights dim
and you’re forced to stumble home.
your mind is the strainer that sits in some rusted sink,
the one that collects the leftover
silt of those that came before you. your body is the mother of
aborted misadventures, your soul the child of an abandoned universe.
you are the keeper of scars
in a house built on fiberglass
that offers no door from which to enter, or leave.

there are few evenings when you
even bother to let the fresh air thin out of your thoughts, rare when
you notice the lull of the t.v. in the background, tuning out every word.
but aren’t there some nights when you can’t seem to ignore
the persistent barking of the dogs
that hunger for your flesh? don’t you feel their greedy jaws
nipping at your toes when
you tell yourself: these sounds, this racket, do not exist.
these persistent noises are simply
the birds flirting with the trees, the stars
making love to the moon, the clouds reuniting with the rain. 
but no matter what you tell yourself, you still can’t seem to shake
the approaching surrender;

these dogs, they’re calling for you, and tonight you are
powerless to the sound as you finally
drop your baggage on the steps,
abandon your skin, your hair, your antique jaded scent
and blindly follow the deafening noise towards the quiet, towards
the silence that is waiting for you, waiting for
only you to stumble home.