Infinitive: a state of being

A Voices from the FOLD: Year 7 original poem.

BY LEANNE CHARETTE

This skin, showered with questions, eyed with suspicion, will not be passive. Here, a line was drawn, showing exactly where it deviates from the design. Here, the bunched attempts to mend, at the hip,

puckered along the spine.

This skin has known the scalpel, has felt overactive nerves severed;

has walked bare, between the balance bars, disfigurements on show, has seen itself reflected in two-way mirrors by harsh, medical lights.

This skin, riotous tissue symbiotically tied to a fray of joy, pain, longing; intertwined with the chair that frees, never confines, is with surgical precision, reduced to the inanimate.

To inaccessible minds, the living becomes only thing.

But this skin will not be passive; beneath its surface tense muscles resist the wounds that tried to render it inactive. It will heal over and over.