The Squeeze

He’d left his signature on my arm
A keepsake of his passion
A keepsake of his love
Brown fingers dark stretched
A marriage proposal then,
this quite circular bruise
He’d left his imprint of his madness
A keepsake of his hate
A keepsake of his ascendancy
Beneath the skin
lying like sticks between the muscles

with dollops of baby blood

I escaped through a sliver
left open through thought,
no, not vision
…That unwanted disruption
marked by no sufficient shift in sea
Just my pathetic reflection
what made of my shadow
in this cloud of denial… confusion…

A stamp asserting the end
To feelings left unstitched
Awakening only thru this lingering,
this resolute haunting…

And most frightening… a yearning
for the ghosts of squeezing insanity

…the haints of romance