About Self-Diagnosis

Knowing what's wrong doesn't always make it easy to fix.

Trying to put heartache to words
feels a bit like pulling shrapnel
from a tender, still-bleeding wound,
the kind that embeds itself in
vulnerable patches of flesh
guarding deeper organs inside.
To live with such an injury
might be more terrible than death,
each day plagued by an awareness

Of the metal still burrowing
slowly toward your brain or heart,
and yet the sweet relief offered
by the quick extraction of that
shard might very well open the
way for some vital vein to bleed
itself into the unmoved earth.
Still you rake your flesh with pencils.
Still you dig for lead-tip bullets.