Black Umbrella

everything you say about hurt is a lie,
I know there are never enough words,
not words still dry, still complete,
a gutted lexicon slips into the flooded chasm
between want and fulfilment,
dissolving into platitudes as it pleads ;

see, to explain hurt, you have to explain everything,
but everything is a lattice of unhealed scars that
re-patterns incessantly in the darkness of ache,
always changing, always erasing;
everything is tiny fragments that congeal
into a living, writhing organism,
its heart beating outside your heart,
its breath warming inside your breath;
always growing, always imploding;

everything is a cloudy sky that forgot
the smell of rain,
everything is the memory of hurt
that whispers your drowning name,
everything is never really yours to tell,
whatever you say about hurt is a lie;

yet we will nod and weep, even smile a little,
and the lie will grow soft, glistening wings,
become a silver truth in the empty night sky,
no longer birthed from our silent eyes
that stare out of blurry window panes
at our sodden clothes,
walking that day
in the after wet of a summer shower,
the warm rain locked forever
in the black of a closed umbrella.