We’ve all got scars—the sloppy needlecraft
of having sewn ourselves back together
with whatever we could find—catgut, dental
floss, the long, gray strands of our mother’s hair.
And still we chase childhood, time of the worst
wounds, the ones that fester because we had
no words with which to make a poultice
and those who did didn’t know where to put it.
By the time we could name our pain it had
become routine, a broken bone set wrong,
and what fool wants to break their own heart twice?
Nostalgia is a snare, a sharp-barbed hook,
a bear trap tethering us to a place
we should have left but kept wanting to love.