Splinter
Each morning, I collect myself in bed—
scattered arms, nerves asleep, legs astray—
the last part I find, fumbling, is my head,
the night has cast my mind so far away.
While gathering thoughts, I lose my dreams,
they fall and break like dolls I’ve knocked in haste—
sometimes a fragment on the floorboard gleams
and stops me cold, a lone and broken face
of one from long ago I used to know
but now, to save myself, try to forget.
The heart has doors that turn, and our dreams flow
backward like blue blood, while life burns scarlet,
But cut a blue vein, and it will bleed red—
or close any door, and you will fall dead.
Holly Woodward is a writer and artist. “Wanting,” a small online chapbook appears at Gold Wake Press. Four poems were published recently by Mezzo Cammin. Some prose is on the 92nd Y Unterberg poetry site, Podium.
