The Shame of the Wound Dissuades Some Patients from Seeking Help

by Sam J. Grudgings

Kumiko SHIMIZU

All the boys who never escaped have taken to caddisfly the streets onto their well past pupal forms. Their horrible whalefall & anemone ridden bodies hauled into the antiseptic of shore. You are so proud, you pretend you have never been them. Streetlights lining sea-sank chests gleaming. What possibilities a horrible tide will illuminate. But oh, not you. Oh no not you, boy of the waves, cinema of the cresting current, static star of anything but the beneath. The deep of a town yielding no results but benthic boys who are distorted from having sank so deep. Tourist of depths you are not welcome at. When you enter the ocean & the man that was, you lie so effectively to yourself you believe he is grateful to take you inside him. The barnacles lining him are sore with memory & the gills between his legs that were once streets, that were once home, that were once private have become exhibitions at the museum of left behinds & he is so desperate VHS for the film of air he will breathe in anything. Skin covered in calculated risk, bravado, locker room talk, arms reach, hearts absence. The one-way signs lining his throat read Sink Me as he sucks you dry & even you still will love the act of leaving him, like the economy, like the end credit, like the tide, leaving boy with tarmac & neon arcade carapace gasping for a coin or the air of escape or the traffic to roll over & engulf him; hard on & remembrance, & aquaticalia gleaming. The boy is you. The film of you escaping was a lie. Rewound tapes in their seaweed tangled rewriting what you know. All we know is the journey. All we care for is the film. All that matters is the acting. Pretending this isn’t where we came from. Doesn’t matter how deep we go. Our gills are code, are scars, are smiles our muscle make of the mess we made of ourselves. Keloid binary of a severe misfunction. Relegate yourself to VCR logic gates. Sink me, oh satisfaction. Devastate me, oh happy. Wreck me oh context. Rewind me, oh future I cannot fathom. You were never better off knowing it could be better.

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Sam J. Grudgings is a queer poet, storyteller & events host shortlisted for the Outspoken Poetry Prize 2020. His debut collection, The Bible II, was published with Verve Poetry Press in 2021. His pamphlet, The Nation’s Saddest Love Poems, was published in 2023 with Broken Sleep Books. He can be found online @samjgrudgings & in real life somewhere in Bristol.