Don't Pick the Scab

And see how the flesh grows back/ across a wound, with a great vehemence,/
more strong/ than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses, /when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh.

(Jane Hirschfield, For What Binds Us)





I didn't much like you when we first met.

Enigma you were, you remain.

Drawn to you, yet, your tendency

towards shock for shock's sake

seemed self indulgent,

self-centered, self serving.



You are anything but self serving.



Don't pick the scab.

Momentary flicker of involuntary love,

diluted in the unkept promise of shared dance floor,

distilled in later spark of idiosyncratic poem.

I cannot help being anything less: air, freak, control, knob.

You, either: chaos, volume, noise, nondescript.



No rosewater to soften that scab.

Leave it on. I want that scab to stay.

I want to wrap the scab,

no common gauze but rather

linen bleached by sun,

softened by grit and grain.

I want to wrap you, your scab,

every inch of your proud flesh.



Hard-won, raised flesh.

May your skin may never thin,

may it never burst, be injured, explode,

freeze, collapse, implode.

My murmured blessing to you, Captain.



Don't pull off the scab.

Yes, you fall in love.

at every check out counter

I see this in you and praise it.

Knew that once I was your cashier

and blushed.



I see this in you

and I praise all of you.


(cc) Karen G. Johnston