raw

It's like someone ripped my chest open tonight and dragged my heart across the tiniest holes of a nutmeg grater. After the surface has been scraped there's still this big pod in hand, hardly a dent on the surface and yet it's given the best of itself. There's always some idiot who feels the need to compare the size of what's left, the pod, the shell, to the amount of spice on the plate. They can't find the scar - it's not always the most visible - so they think there's more to be given, that what was thrown down was proportionally not nearly enough.

I spent three hours tonight looking at the back of a right ear and nothing I could say would fill the gap between what's in hand and the offerings that have fallen through the cracks, between what that ear might pick up versus what the mind attached might actually hear. I'm bad at talking, anyway. There's a fine line between listening and hearing, and that ear just keeps listening for the grater, the sound of scraping, like knuckles on a wall. The heart is quieter. It bleeds and you'd never know it.