madness
I wrote as though
a madwoman:
rising out of anguish;
pillars of pain,
the palette of distrust
painted bitter colours
upon the razored surface
of my broken heart . . .
These tears
carry forth no healing,
instead: the acid sluice
of sorrow
etches grief
indelibly, to my visage
carved deep
here on the contours
of my ravaged ego
Tender, still, from
unhealed wounds
suffered in times past
Years of undoing
every reparation
which I sought to do . . .
K.E.C., March 1996