Life In 14 Lines - 14

My scars have roots in other people’s gardens.

They wind like clinging vines through space and time,

Invuln’rable to weedings or to pardons—

Each one the record of a loss or crime.

This one is where my trusting heart was broken.

This one is where I lost my innocence.

This one from words I never should have spoken.

This is the one that still—still—makes no sense.

And though the skin is dead, it’s still connected

To something in me that pain understands—

I shy away from what got me rejected;

I never reach for what once cut my hands—

Yet still I search for love that, like a seed,

Can grow through all those scars and make me bleed.

Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells