I felt a little reborn that day.

it would have been a cool story to tell
if it had been a fight, or the wound a bit darker
dark enough to find a hand stumbling through the hair, afterwards.

he didn't really mean it, I could see that
in his after-face, or in the way he mumblingly tailed me
to the medical room. he was only swinging the bat
practicing, looking at the bowler's run-up, ready
to go one-down. I wondered how so much blood

could escape through so tiny a space & how
there was any place left for a mind.

they ran out of cotton, we ran to the other end of the school
the nurse there, taking it out of a winnie the pooh picnic plastic box
asked who it was for.

she laughed when I said it was for me.

You don't look like someone who's in pain, at all.

I dream of the day it stops trying to keep everything in
& bursts out of the scratch-like scar, dyeing
the pillow red, & how I would turn it over
to make a wish upon, creating my own blood-thirsty gods
& fangful fairies to pray to.

~Ajay
28/9/2019