THE CUT
A poem about what does not close
Something ruptures, lingers, never fully closes
You brought the steel of the law,
into a wooden room of hushed voices
At ten years old,
I watched you trim away my identity
with steady hands
✄---------
You did not prune for growth,
you cut to claim
✄---------
A parent on paper
handling my life like a document
to be edited at your will
✄---------
My name fell away,
a sound you refused to carry forward
✄---------
You wanted smoother lines
History shaved clean of its edges
A child tailored into something,
that required fewer questions
✄---------
But you only marked the surface
Beneath it,
the root held
And even now,
the warmth in the weather,
opens it all again
✄---------
Concrete dust
Stale smoke
A garage holding more truth
than anywhere else
✄---------
A train behind the house
moving through silence
like a line drawn and erased
✄---------
And her
My sister with scissors,
the only blade I ever trusted
✄---------
Our own ceremony
✄---------
Nothing sharp about it then
Only the slow falling,
of what did not stay
✄---------
Surrounded by out-of-season holidays
Bags of stone
Laughter bending instead of breaking,
in our dark humor
✄---------
We spoke in fragments
small enough to carry
Making some peace with the pieces
✄---------
Always so sure of yourself,
even as a kid
Shearing your own hair
like practice
Then mine
✄---------
Each pass deliberate
Each strand falling,
as if choosing to leave
✄---------
Not just a cut,
a revival
✄---------
For a moment,
we were children again
✄---------
Not untouched,
but unafraid
✄---------
What you did was not taking
It made space
It was medicine
✄---------
Then came another opening
I could not refuse
Bright
Clinical
Seven layers parted,
under careful hands
✄---------
Me lying beneath the light,
heart nearly louder than the thought
✄---------
Let us live
✄---------
A cut felt in pressure
Held breath, then sound
Proof
✄---------
Everything changed shape
We made it
✄---------
What was taken from me returned as
Everything
My son
My daughter
My Sun and Moon 𖤓 ☽
✄---------
The mark remains,
But it was not a loss,
It was a rearrangement
A heart multiplied and moved outside
✄---------
A door
I would walk through again,
without hesitation
✄---------
And then
with wounds still new,
my sister was gone
all at once
out of sequence
✄---------
Another cut that would not close
✄---------
Not clean
✄---------
Small and large, repeating
Shaping everyday
Life moving through the bleeding anyway
✄---------
My father, gone for years
here again, so briefly
We held what we could of each other
across what had changed
after too long away
✄---------
For a moment,
not repair
Just presence
Enough to recognize
Enough to feel
✄---------
Then he was gone, too
Not continuation
Not release
✄---------
A final cut
No motion in it
✄---------
Grief does not resolve
it wears
it returns
It opens the same place
again and again
✄---------
I carry them like this
in lines that do not end
They stay with me
and speak
✄---------
I have known THE CUT
as control,
as ritual,
as opening,
as loss
✄---------
I am what was cut into me
Oof. I appreciate you sitting with me through this piece. It was written in response to the endlessly wonderful Nimila the Inferno’s prompt you can find here.
Thank you for being here.
Until next time,
j




That's one of the best pieces I've ever read.
I'm holding my breath still.
Magnificent. Honest. Real. Thank you for sharing.