Tough Love.
I want your truth.
The entire sordid affair.
Ribbons of trauma laid across your flesh in epitaph of who you used to be a lifetime ago.
A portion will do.
And you will refuse the healing.
Cry to your demons and rage at your histories.
Your pain will be your solace.
Your cold rage shall become fuel.
It is hardly a matter of choosing.
I will reach into your heart and rip out the insides.
Dripping across a gore scattered floor I shall hold it close to mine but for a briefest moment.
Just long enough to teach it the rhythm.
I am a poor seamstress.
Wielding needle and thread I shall mend the worst,
And gentle usher the rest.
My scars can be your road lines, each jagged purple-white streak singing the war poems of Skalds.
Ancestors long dead in the dreaming.
We are modernity, you and I.
Welding fence-spikes to our helmets.
Ethernet cabled blood vessels trailing from botched IVs.
Good practice for the saviours.
And you shall cry hoarse, claim foul play against my rugged skin, my aging shell woven from gene-song.
I shall only hold you tighter.
Nails and teeth scratching at the remains of a well-wasted body of an almost-wasted man.
This is what I bring you.
Resilience built upon suffering.
The quiet kind that nobody near can see.
I shall only hold you tighter.
Until the tears of your eyes can wash away my blood.
This, and the nightmares written into war poems.
I shall only hold you tighter.
Until the tears are welled enough to drink.
