Debride

You’re a memory
of a memory of a memory,
a little worm inside my chest.
You hide behind my ribs, despise the light
that the moon reflects in your apartment.
It shines strongest when we don’t speak:
shy moon, silver sliver that we lie in, nestling
under the dark blanket of our cocoon.

On a sofa sagging with the weight of phantoms,
you tell me I should have left you long ago.
I spin my rings and try to force down your words:
let their truth seep down my throat
and sink in like perfume, like air.
They bloat my belly
and I fill with darkness,
disease, a black wind.

I don’t know how to respond,
to form words of my own.
I can’t find a lucid way to say
that to leave you
would be like cutting out my heart.

About the Author

Amy DeBellis has published two works with Thought Catalog Books: a novella, Penumbra (2015), and a book of poems, Incompleteness (2016).