It’s over, I remember thinking

My darling Katie’s wrists are worn,

A bone poking from behind the stubborn skin

Tired of writing the words,

A thought down, and she was gone for an hour

Scribbling all kinds of nonsense

I’d never seen her write about her own.

Always a word about will,

A word about a thought she swore

To slit her throat before spelling aloud,

A word in the morning about

a dream she’d had;

Fingers gently outstretched to

Something that became apparent only then-

She’d almost had it,

Was sent grasping for such heights that

Waking, in her eyes, was the cruelest death.

Forgotten by midday,

Katie wrote of absurdities

None other than liars and criminals would love

With a wrist as stubborn as hers,

Crammed into a position that would

Speak vulgarity, not wonders

And would remain shaped by the world,

Not stretching, joint by joint,

To catch the sense of content only

Tangible in dreams-

In other words,

It was simply not what she wanted.

One day,

I thought,

Watching that same calloused hand

Speak like an abuser,

One day,

I might take the pen from her hands and

Replace it instead with a tissue

To wipe away the blood that

threatened to seep through the edges

Of her nails-

But only as a fraction of her dreams,

So perhaps that is the reason

Why I got the feeling that,

Through all of her dedication

And love for what she does,

Nothing would change

The fate she created on her own.