The wound is forming a scab.
New-knit memories are healing it back.
The wound will scar,
so it could be skin again.
To feel, to be caressed—
by the sun,
by your touch,
by the rain..

The wound will be skin again.
To be scratched and ripped away.
The wound will bleed—
but it will be skin again.
Healed by a newly-formed scab,
woven from fresh threads of recollections
and bedtime-story yarns.

It’s like that first time you smoke a cigarette with your friends-
a little gross, but you feel so cool.

Or the first time you flash your
I.D. at the bar,
not knowing what to order, but loving the freedom to choose.

When you’re gripping the steering wheel so tight your knuckles turn white,
finally feeling tires touch concrete that isn’t a parking lot.

Decorating that ****** apartment,
paying the first month’s rent-
broke, yet so **** proud.

Holding your diploma in
trembling hands,
a piece of paper most people get,
but this one has your name on it.

That first day everything clicks at work,
a shift so smooth it’s forgotten on the rough days that follow.

That first kiss under the stars,
dopamine shockwaves flooding
every nerve-
you’ll stay up for days on the memory.

Even the devastating realization
that nothing lasts forever,
laying in bed as rain beats
against your window,
music reverberating through a hollow chest.