Bruise Archaeologist

Hiding behind cuff links,
burrowed under the shelter of overarching chins,
on the hillocks of knuckles and paved on the knees
the pinkish-red glow of bruises beckoned me,
so I became an archaeologist of these markings
and set to unearthing their ravaged cities.

The way they had been graved over I understood
that they hadn’t been washed over by an antediluvian catastrophe,
or retreated into submission
by chafing walls or untold injuries,
but by sticks and stones of human making.

Unable to bear their fossilized states,
I renewed them into paintings —

No longer were they seared into a piece of flesh
or run over by several layers of cloth,
now they were red brushstrokes, thickening
into a scarlet lead on the edges of a
milky white canvas.

I understood then that
all pain can be relieved into art.

Even Hitler painted
to relieve his pain of human inadequacy,
but he failed,
he failed miserably.

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