a wound

"You have an old wound," she told me --
    cropped gray hair and sloping ceilings,
    for the dozenth, the hundredth, time.

"You have an old wound" --
     and how to take such a thing seriously

when in the West Bank the settlers have lit an infant on fire
while the guards at the border blithely deny another human home
and the videos from just a few states away
show the shooting of an unarmed man
and the quick lies to cover it up
which -- we must assume --
are entirely normal.

"You have an old wound" --
   what is such a thing in this
   this
   this world gone madder than me.

"You have an old wound.
  Here, in your heart"
-- she touches her own heart, lightly --
"and you can care for it."

Here I sit --
  touching my heart lightly --
watching the hurt.

Stepping into it.

Through it.

To a world whose wounds
are older than Cain
and as new as this morning's

awful

news.