Georgie Roache

Splintered 

I wonder why the world is splintered

wander by grief eating lampposts

to see fractures in constellations

    in the whole of the night

     screams lungs raw until they burn rubber.

My thoughts run fearless and faster than the highway

could paint yellow down its chest,

tires spun, rubber burned to breathe.

—I think in miles— —across towns— off roads

in bramble that split cheek

and painted lines down my chest.

I walked through doubts as mud with gray stones for teeth

that kept me moving forward in discomfort to stop the discomfort—

the gnawing of teeth on sole. My soul

was chewed towards the back of the throat ready for digestion.

I could not think such things for dread of destruction

but I did

ache, in the wake

of You.

I walked on.

The trees broke off pieces of themselves

in brown gray silver slivers

to carve onto their chests

Your name.

But now they are not whole—

they splinter themselves and youth too

carve their initials

inside the hole of a heart that will last longer

than the kids and the love that made it.

I could feel the splinters beneath my fingernails

enough to doubt that the tree was still whole

because it wasn’t.

It was cut down and carved into cross

for a man who wore splinters as a crown.

The king of the trees

bore all their pieces, their skin, their sin,

so that they might be whole

in the judgment of the night.