EUPHEMISM

Murder by a scalpel is pronounced death, 

not surgery. There is no intricacy 

 

when the blade drowns in a body, whirling

inside like a wet threading of gut. 

 

Whatever the instrument, do not hesitate

to call your suffering by its name. 

 

It won’t soften it, but it will unshroud the 

mystique. I have stared at my misery 

 

for so long, it seems less oblique. How this

works—the fangs still terrify, but they

 

look just like teeth. The tissue, death-sharp 

yet quite familiar in its whiteness.

 

Our prophets have always been about pre-

tending. They think calling a wound 

 

a flower will taper its ache, sugar the poison

that mars the blood. But the first step

 

to wholeness has always been recognition.

It is a lie that the lie will be

 

the genesis of healing. The greatest miracle 

lies within the same truth we are taught 

 

to abandon. When you stare at the mirror, do

not invert the image. There, your open 

 

chest. Gaze. Is that a nail where your heart 

used to be? Wipe off the honey & tell

 

the wound as it is. Metal organ. Blood rust.

Why must we wait until our suffering 

 

ends before we name it? What happens when 

we are the ones outlived? I have chosen 

 

to resit the ritual of time, to call every bruise 

by its colour. For what is a scar, 

 

if not a wound waiting to become? Come 

unto me. I will show you where I hurt 

on the river’s body. Look. I am touching 

all over the water.