I wash around the wound
on your back, press
my fingers and rub
around the cut, flat
and long, like the road
you needed
to take home. After the accident
I wanted to say, let this be
a road to take you far
away from California,
broken elbows
and promises
from bad men,
friends who float
on the surface
of your fractured back;
let this be
a road
to forgiving,
or healing,
or just starting fresh
again, or just let this be
a surface for my thumbs,
moving in half-moons,
where I remove old glue,
grey and persistent,
where I add pressure,
where you do your best
to hold in sighs,
to relax when I touch,
and I know you don’t want to speak
to me; I’m learning
how to listen to the sound
of water falling. My thumbs move
closer to the middle,
toward the line
until I know I’ve cleaned
off as much as I can,
hand you the sponge,
let go of the wound.
JESSICA TURNEY was raised in Madera, California and graduated with her MFA in Poetry from Fresno State. She has been published in NELLE, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, and was a finalist in Frontier’s OPEN prize. She also received the Ernesto Trejo Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Jessica currently lives in Fresno with her partner and their two cats, Minerva and Zucchini.
