Amputees

Amputees

Jessica Wills

Certain days sting forever, embedding themselves into our beings 
Like flesh eating bacteria. A scab emerges above the wound. 
Our worst fears actualized, we try to codify loss in tissue and sinew,
If only this ghost would incarnate, to haunt at least visibly.
So I paint self-portraits of the terrorizing, insistent scrape 
Of the raw glass edge. 

And what then, for the ordinary Tuesday? A midweek
Sandpapering after this hollow horrible wounding.
How then, the midnight visitations
Of unfriendly ghosts, faces better forgotten?
Why then, the open casket? The paperwhite blossoms 
Grinning grimly upon the mourners—mocking. 
And oh! Almost worse than gone, your papier-mâché face
Swings, a phantom piñata daring me to wonder
How those doctors of the after-death pasted 
You together and in their denial of your bullet-blasted head
Made you only more horrific, a curiosity trotted out
For the village to gawk upon—the boy whose power
Misfired against himself. 

And when we meet again, will you be restored truly?
Not with a silly putty brow but enfleshed again. Shall we,
Hobble down the heavenly streets? Or will heaven unstitch 
The nimble surgeon’s sutures that restored me? Regrow 
My snapped off branches? Or will we amputees hop into heaven—even 
Roll if we must?

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Jessica Wills
Poet

Jessica Wills is recent graduate from Grove City College with a degree in English Literature. This is her first literary accomplishment outside of editing the campus literary magazine. Follow along with her journey, literary and otherwise, on Twitter @stressicawills. 

Photography by Mykola "Kolya" Korzh