The old man's scar was huge, jagged like
some callow kid's crude drawing
with those thick elementary school pencils,
a lightning bolt on the chest of the hero.
In fact, so damn nasty looking
it made me flinch.
I tried my best not to look.
Brought up religion, politics,
everything my mother told me not to.
Anything that was not the scar
that tugged my eyes
out of their middle-aged lethargy.
The next day when I woke
in a room full of citrus smells,
and the brightness of primary colors,
I realized what I should've known,
what I should've admitted long ago:
the total, the complete impossibility of love.
|