Tonight's Poet Corner: A Victim Of Unknown Circumstances
A Victim Of Unknown Circumstances by Belinda Roddie Wearing red gloves kept the scars away from the sun, so they stayed white and raw and rubbery, like the pith of an orange. Buttoning the coat up to the last brass brooch kept the cold out when standing in the river, and the boots with steel zippers kept the water from clogging the dying skin between the rows of crackling, wood-like toes. Eaten away by the elements, I remained clothed and concealed. Still, she saw my face from time to time, and her kisses made the scabs sting and threaten to erode. I was always patchy from my own decay - a skeleton that never actually revealed the brittle bone beneath, a husk you couldn't even suck marrow from if you were hungry enough. But she laid into me, until she stripped the leather from my fingers, and the air made my flesh gasp for sustenance - pink, puckered, but never fully healed.