Not Enough Words

Changing words.

There are so so many I have. Would love to give place to play.

I can’t is simple.

Short.

It doesn’t hurt as much as an explanation.

Don’t ask me anymore questions because I’m covered in bruises. Cuts I to don’t have time to cover.

Blood it can’t be bothered to wipe away.

Unless you carry a first aid kit

Listen to I can’t.

I can’t

look it up. Grand words for grand life work in poems, not in shuffling savings to checking to keep the lights on.

I run in place for punishment

While others walk barefoot with snails for joy

Typing with one hand, stirring with the other

Roasting juices in my paragraphs

Might actually flavor the story

With something more than

Killing the hero because you have

Nothing left for her to lose.

I do not have the emotional savings to spend heedlessly on

Wrapping thoughts in pretty packages

So I don’t scare those with time and to linger and stare

I. Can’t.

I could if it had a Time Machine and could fly back and make a million new choices of

not that boy, not that night, not that class, not that city, not that job, not that medicine, not that friend, not that dog, not that apartment, not that wet carpet, not that road with all the traffic, not that friend who wasn’t, not that doctor, not that birthday, not that baby

Maybe I would have the luxury of resource to tell you how I might

So indulge in the gift bestowed of the chance to triple edit thoughts for perceived wisdom and palatablilty. Be honored as a creator and thinker of unsurpassing genius

Barely linking syllables, I will continue saying I can’t.

Because only I care to know the before and after sounds. And I listen if only because I can’t do anything else.