Healing Time

This poem was originally published in Tendon Magazine a publication of Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine.
You can read this and its companion poem here. You can watch the poem in video form here.

six weeks to heal from an open wound
first, clean the wound,
next apply antibiotic ointment to prevent festering.
then with great tenderness and care
close the wound by bringing the raw flesh together again
help the tears touch
apply a soft dressing
keep the couplet dry.
a scar will come to remind that once, here, was a brief separation.

            six weeks after open heart surgery
the soreness from your cracked sternum begins to ease
in half a year’s time, two full seasons of waxing and waning moons
the full benefits of the trauma to your heart, your chest, your body
heals across the crack where the light once got in
light doesn’t get in, there, for most people.
the scar is yours to keep, a souvenir.

            no one knows how long it takes to heal
after you lose your lover of 33 years
after a speeding White Prius hits his Silver Corolla at full force
after a traumatic impact shatters both the legs,
legs that hours before tossed frisbees into wire nets
on the hilly course of Dorsey’s Knob
legs that wrapped around you, loved you
in the light of that final crisp autumn morning
after his heart
burst
with more than it was ever meant to hold.
there was no scarring on his body, even after that body donated
amber eyes, smooth flesh, strong bone.
Scars only form from living.