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Wound
by Jessica Turney

July 28, 2021 Contributed By: Jessica Turney

Wounded Heart
Photo by Ante Gudelj on Unsplash

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.

Filed Under: Featured Content, Poetry Posted On: July 28, 2021

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