The wound walks into the room
and everyone pretends it’s a performance art piece.
They tilt their heads,
squint at the blood,
ask if I might consider
editing out eighty percent of the mess.

Too much, they say,
as if truth should arrive
in polite portions,
garnished,
digestible,
an hors d’oeuvre for their fragile appetites.

I serve survival raw,
and they send it back to the kitchen.

How dare I—
to endure the fire,
to crawl out of rubble,
to stand with bones showing
and still speak.
How dare I—
to say, look, this is what your silence has done,
this is what your violence has carved,
this is how your comfort costs me.

You prefer neat corpses
to loud survivors.

You prefer the mirror polished
so you never have to see your own attic of shame,
your basement of rot.

You call me indulgent
when I lift the bandage.
You call me hysterical
when I count the scars.
You call me broken
because you cannot bear to say guilty.

Here’s the punch line:
I am the one bleeding,
yet somehow I am also the punchline.

You laugh,
and the laughter tastes like chloroform.

Still—
I tell you again:
this is what your behavior does to me.
This wreckage is not metaphor.
This scream is not exaggeration.
This is testimony,
still hot,
still jagged,
still dripping.

And you—
you take my truth,
pin it on the wall,
and call it decoration.

How dare you.
How dare you.
How dare you