The Edge, by Damen O'Brien

The Edge

They agreed that she’d come off it

thirty years are far too long to be

depressed about anything but they

must have rushed the protocol,

got the increments a little wrong

so that the shape of her denial

became a cliff, she started to see

scoring in the people she passed,

crazing or crackling like poorly

handled pottery, not in everyone

or always and in some the lines

were filaments and in others

open edges, so they’d smile like

broken crockery flung after a

wedding. What she heard when

she heard talking was a kitchen

kind of disaster; tinkling and falling

of an open cut of glass, grinding

on its laughter or an instep on

the edge of a sharp, either all

that scarification, all that frosting

had been there already or

she was only now uncovering

from the fog of drug withdrawal

a truth the world was hiding –

if every bone is strung together

on little bits of breaking, then

all the useless pain of living,

all the weary pain we’re hiding

is bitter on the tongue but soft

on the stomach. She takes

her time over the last pillowed

tablet: the world is fragile enough.

by Damen O'Brien