Dried Up Pens
Hunter Blackwell
I wanted to stop writing about him--
everything bleeds red,
everything bleeds him.
I changed the color
of the ink,
black, green, orange
and blue.
But he never leaves me
like the brown color embedded into
my skin that makes me a threat,
like the black saturating
the strands of my hair,
he is everywhere.
I see him in the face
of every man that’s hit
on me at work.
I see him in the beard
that grows from
every chin.
I see him in every full
lip that curls up into a smile.
I see him in every brown
eyes that looks bashfully
on at the world,
that keeps it young
and full of optimism.
He plagues me in the worst way--
he bleeds into my poetry.
Everything has become
about the day he
placed malicious
intent in every thrust
into me.
When people ask why
I dare cut my hair,
why I would sever
the soft and coily
curls from my head,
all I can think about is
maybe I can
rid myself of him
that maybe this would set me free.
I tell them instead,
because I wanted too.
They don’t ask me twice.
I don’t look at the
photograph of me holding
my degree without
remembering all the nights
I laid awake at night,
wishing I could scrub
the ghost of his fingertips
from my skin,
praying I could close my eyes
and forgot the way
his weight crushed
my chest.
I told myself
he doesn’t deserve that power,
doesn’t deserve the space
he takes up on the page,
doesn’t deserve the ink
I use to write about him.