Exit Wound | Emer McDermott
A sinking in my stomach like the sun setting.
We’ve reached an end but I keep forgetting.
Driving away from where we met, soft magenta
fusing through the clouds, I always liked you
but never out loud. I’m almost over it.
I’ll go home and ignore this itch.
Are you trying to show that you don’t know
how to love? I was convinced you did.
Have I wasted time, watering weeds like flowers?
Did I spend hours
nurturing false belief? What has hatched is nebulous,
dangerous, a toxic devotion to weakness. Don’t ask me
to be half-hearted. If your fumes are caustic,
I’ll still breathe it. Keep your sweet
nothings to yourself because I’m not
as strong as I seem. Don’t be my false light
in the midst of life’s
bleeding.
I’d still stitch you up, kiss your cuts,
bring you home to me. You act so tough
but when life is rough,
you come calling out for me. Every time I find you,
I only feel more lost. I’ve got to close the book on us,
blur you out of my peripheral. So stay away,
don’t look my way. Please don’t make this
more difficult.
Emer McDermott is a secondary school teacher of English and Religious Education living in Clare, Ireland. Works previously published by Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine, Sideways Poetry Magazine, and Academy of the Heart and Mind.