Opening Up

“I just need to know,” she assured me,

Opening the vein she called my radial.

 

Out pours the mud and filth I was so

Often found rummaging through.

Not the dirt you were expecting?

 

She dips her hand beneath my skin,

Uproots the tree I haven’t seen

Since the damn thing snapped my arm.

Mud and leaves coat my hand.

 

She delves deeper, still searching,

“Who keeps this s**t around?

Just throw some of it out already.”

She’s shoving my favorite

Memories and old toys back down my veins.

 

She pushes past fifteen years’ worth of

Bedtime tea and sloppily written

Stories I imagined before I hit the first grade.

Letters are dripping out with each drop

Of milk, honey, and tea.

 

“I know you’re hiding something.” And instead

Bubbles lazily drift out, each one

I used to kill with a pop. “You’re such

A child. Don’t you have anything good in here?”

 

She reaches deeper and deeper,

Until she yanks her hand out, covered

In tiny pricks from the blackberry bushes

We used to grow in the back yard. She pulls

Each thorn out one by one.

 

“You’re full of such s**t.”