Acid

(For Nurbanu)

The flesh that melted into mouth may silence those once plump lips
if only momentarily: in this second living cell evolves from frightened memory to an
untouched glimpse of savored domesticity.

When scars are not scars but a reconstruction of what was, when flesh that curved to
feature your brown eyes now glues them shut.
When the man who loved you, still says he does.
His fingers on your navel, smooth but flinching, your soft body to his fingertips. He
avoids the bones of your cheeks. Does he still think you learnt a lesson?

Your lips they open, even if cracked, your tongue half dissolved can never unsay. Words
for freedom cost you this. In recollections you have unsaid it, and your face melts back
into the ripeness of a May mango.

Words continue to spill from mangled flesh. Your voice, now venom; it crawls from a
mouth once praised for silence. Your tongue, half of what it was, fiercer now.