Still the Knife

The knife-maker he comes still to my window when I am distracted : "come and take this knife , take it, see how it is pretty how it gleams in the raw light. It will not cut you" he purres with the light and youth in his eyes...and promise. He smiles like a sweet, shy, lover. He watches me as I take the knife.

Inevitably the knife penetrates. The knife is blunt and does not cut but rips, rubbing my skin untill a sore is opened and than a larger wound. The pain is undescribable, the wound never heels, I watch it as it festers and infects over and over again....never healing, never healing.

He was not the knife-maker but his shadow.

It is not the knife-maker anymore but his ghost who looks right through me when we meet, like a stranger.

It is not his ghost anymore but me who takes his knife and rips myself open, over and over again. Again and again.