The White Rug

They always want you
face down on the white rug.

Want you to be afraid
to stain it.

Want you to bleed
somewhere out of sight.

Some extraordinary
wounds you’ve got there,

they say. But how old
are they? They can’t still

be bleeding? You must be
mistaken. It must have been

something else, something
you did. Don’t stain

the white rug with it.
Crawl over there if you’re

going to do that. The rug
is fragile, and expensive.

We don’t want to have to
replace it, or dye it — although

we would know
it was a white rug to begin

and still is under the cover
of color. And if we tore it out

we’d just put another white one
down. Meanwhile, 

you’re still bleeding and
face down on the rug as they

begin to clean up around you then
tie a rope around your neck

and start to drag you off
to other rooms where the rugs

aren’t white but the color
of older blood and also, maybe,

 the ash of many bonfires,
black paint on a graveyard marker,

dirt from their disturbed 
basement floor:

from where you’re lying,
nothing looks or smells clean.