The doctors offered measured pills;
I swallowed poems for deeper ills.
They burned more slowly, fierce and true,
And scarred the page instead of tissue.

Ink entered every starving vein;
Each syllable acquired a stain.
My pulse learned meter—raw, precise—
And turned old wounds to sacrifice.

Each stanza stitched what sorrow tore;
Each metaphor cauterized more.
Some verses whispered; others bled,
Yet all kept something in me fed.

Now, when I bleed, the black ink flows;
It stains whatever hand it knows.
If blood proves life, then let mine start—
With ink for veins, and verse for heart.

This piece holds the hours when medicine alone was not enough — when the page became the place the pain could go, and verse did the quiet work of keeping something fed.

✦ Sit with it

Where does your own healing hide — in words, in color, in quiet?

If your scars could speak in verse, what would their first line be?

Stay as long as you need. The ink dries, the verse remains — and so do you.