Battle Wounds

You wear the word
forgiveness on your chest
in thick black ink.

When I ask if it ever hurts,
you say only when

you forget.

The world has taught you things,
mostly all the hard way- you’ve got bumps

and bruises,
scars where they hit the hardest.

But you do your best to live up
to that mark on your chest.

You even stamped hope on your neck
so its always back there somewhere.

You etched dark clouds into
the bottoms of your feet,
so as to keep you upright
when the sky crashes down on you.

And on the inside of your thigh,
where no one gets to see,
you scratched out the word scared
because no one needs to know.

I know these things because
you wear the same weighted shade
of shame and pride as I do.

It just looks better on you.

So when I stop and ask you