When She Cut Me Open Poem by richard ilnicki

When she cut me open
she didn't use manmade instruments.
She used words, singular and in sentences,
and even though she appeared to be
out of her mind
she possessed enough wisdom
to know what would hurt me the most.
The words she used
produced the familiar hacking effect of a butcher's knife.
The strident syllables
entered my disemboweled soul with caustic.
They penetrated my existence, my very being,
like a double-blade amputating scalpel.

Frequently she treated me like a child
while cleverly emptying my pockets
of every cat-eyed marble memory I'd ever won,
then she'd call me stupid
and leave me alone on my end of the seesaw.
She said sharp serrated things
I hadn't experienced before.
Even coming from someone who had never loved me
I'd never felt the blade's vitriole penetrate so deeply.

I have a personality, you know. I am a person!
But not in her eyes. Tonight to her
I was below the lowest phylum, an animal
without a conscience or feelings.

But why should it matter
that her language hurt me
and left me flopping on the floor
unable to rise to her expectations
like a helpless cripple?

Well, I guess it shouldn't matter all that much,
and perhaps I would have slept much sounder
had I not still loved her,
had I not grown accustomed to her soft whisper
in my ready ear
hanging by a bloody tendon.