It’s grotesque sometimes.

Pumped blood that flows through your heart, through your varied limbs.

Specifically flowing through your arm.

Now displaced into tiny splattered specks on the bathroom floor.

Displaced on a metal spoon, with undersides charred.

Displaced into plastic syringes peaking out the smallest pocket in your duffel bag.

Straight and narrow.

Your life will never be straight and narrow.

Not even for a glimpse. And a glimpse this was.

Three months, and the path was mowed, wide.

Winding, in places this path was never meant to guide.

And I feel grotesque this time.

My own beating heart stretching, pulling on either side.

Asking my mind: are we angry? are we sad?

Always wishing to forgive, but those images never leave our head.

Of displaced blood in that plastic syringe.