The Wound

The tenth day, and they give my mirror back. Who knows how to drink pain, and live? I look, and the glass shows the truth, fine as a hair, of the scalpel's wounding care. A round reproach to all that's warped, uncertain, clouded, the sun climbs. On the wall, by the racked body shrouded in pain, is a shadow thrown; simple, unchanged, my own. Body, on whom the claims of spirit fall to inspire and terrify, there flames at your least breath a fire of anguish, not for this pain, but that scars will remain. You will be loved no less. Spirit can build, make shift with what there is, and press pain to its mould; will lift from your crucible of night a form dripping with light. Felix culpa. The sun lights in my flesh the great wound of the world. What's done is done. In man's estate let my flawed wholeness prove the art and scope of love.