Unfinished Business

You were doomed
to do this before
you ever picked up a pen.

Your first word wasn’t “Mama” but “apple,”
although by that you meant “Mama.”
No one could see that even then,
you thought in metaphors.

You read from cereal boxes
before you learned to eat from them.

You cut yourself wide open whittling an arrow
with a Bowie knife at six, and still remember
the sight of the bone
in the center of the cleft in your thumb,
and thinking of that now,
it should have been clear

that you would be hurt
every time you tried to create something,

that you’d open yourself up
on impulse, just because you could,

and that you’d always reach for the biggest tool
to do the smallest work.

Fat pen in the hand tonight
and all that blood still inside.

What a gift, they tell you.
What an inspiration.
How you have moved them all.

That scar
still hounds you
every morning at breakfast,
a note in plain sight telling you
to stop wasting time eating
when words are still everywhere,
and you still haven’t explained
why “apple”
is another word for
“mama.”