Get It Out

A group of surgeons slide blades into
tissue to separate the skin, and they root
around with hooks and forceps to find
that thing you say makes you act the way
you act. It’s elusive and bends back into the
the blind spots when they get it on the
ropes, which takes a toll on your molars
due to the uncontrollable clenching of
your jaws.

They are unable to find anything so they
sew you back together, and charge you
anyway. You go home and fall back into your
old patterns, punching holes in every wall
and buying decorative clocks and paintings
online to cover them. One of the paintings
is of a man carrying a young boy in his arms
through a winter landscape. You don’t talk
about it much when people come over, but
you throw plates and knives its direction
regularly.

You can still feel something knotted
brushing up against the back of your
rib cage because it’s still there making you
throw bottles of piss out of your car window.
The targets are always the people that tell
you the truth about how no one around
would bring you dinner if your mother died.
It’s not that they want you to suffer it’s more
that they think it’s what you deserve for all the
lashing out.

It takes burning down your neighbor’s
house to make you see that this path is
unsustainable. After watching the flames
crack the roof in half and the structure melt
into a crooked V you walk straight back to
the painting of the man carrying the boy and
you yank one of the knives free from the
canvas. You dig deep into the meat
between your bones and you don’t intend to stop
until you’re dead, or you get it out.