If my emotions have been mangled,
let us not say that they’ve been
disfigured or mutilated.

Let us just call them crushed—
ground into a fine powder
woven throughout my tapestry,

gluing together the pottery
of my seemingly disjointed pieces.
That I may no longer be in a phase

but be an integration—
a disfiguration and mutilation 
of what it means to be 

damaged. Let us say that I am the 
enchantment behind mangled as a word. 
I am the enchantment behind all my words.

first published in Skeleton Flowers Press