Society

Memories deepen
as wounds are opened
and histories are cited
and promises of futures more certain,
more prudent,
are made.

(There is nothing
that I can say here
that will change your mind.)

Past is past. You and your kind
have made an art of apologies.
I still haven't forgiven myself
for playing the victim.

There is a tiny death,
a ghost to permeate each cell
a cancer that consumes every limb
every time I hear you speak
your truth to me.
You remind me
of what a fool I am.
You remind me
of how easily I fall.
I analyse the color of your eyes,
the meaning of the look you gave me,
the meaning behind your brutal honesty
the contradiction of your apologies...
as I try to make sense of your world,
it becomes broken into a soulless assembly
of blocks and pixelation
and text fortified
by scientific evidence.
Seduced by the brain, but broken at heart,
you remind me
that I am a woman.

(Personally,
there is nothing you can say here
that can change my mind.
I still pretend that the world
can change more than its infrastructure.
That this endless bowl of fruit
will never rot my teeth,
that this pain
has a fertile, illogical end, grinning
from ear to ear.)