When All Else Fails
Author | James Diaz
This
body is hard
to find
a place
to crawl into
or out of
depending
on the weight
of your hell
not all scars
tell a story
or were deserved
it’s just the thing
that you carry
and don’t know
what else to call it
where to set it down
how to shut it off
when the hours fill up
so quickly
and all the spaces
between then and now
blur and the bleeding
becomes more than bleeding
like the spirit testing
its escape route
nothing feels like it belongs
to you anymore
you aren’t where you last
saw yourself
every
imaginary hurt
shadowing
skin
assembling loss
like evidence
that can’t speak
on its own behalf
if you survive
tonight
it’s because all else failed
to destroy you.
About the Author | James Diaz is founding editor of the literary arts & music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared in HIV Here & Now, Ditch, Cheap Pop Lit, Foliate Oak, Epigraph, Chronogram and Collective Exile. His first book of poems, “This Someone I Call Stranger” is forthcoming from Indolent Books next year. He lives in upstate New York.