You were the roses they brought me in the hospital, pt. I

I woke up on the seventh morning
to find a familiar face sitting
at the breakfast table, and at first,
I didn't have a clue of who you were,
for you did not have a Mohawk
the first time we met, and because
your eyes had lost the dish cleaner sparkle
that I had never realised was there
until it wasn't. I couldn't believe
how empty you looked, like a cobweb-laced
blank picture frame, and, secretly,
foolishly, I hoped that I would be
enough to fill the space within you
that really wasn't so hard to see
if you knew roughly where to look.

At lunchtime, the forbidden question
came up indirectly - I'd been aching
for the answer for hours -
playthings and cravings, and ravings
about the joys of cocaine slipped lithely
beneath the staff's noses, and I asked
'Is that what you're here for' because
I naturally assumed that it was;
after all, you were still attending the
alternative school for kids who've gotten
expelled and when we used to go out
to see local bands play at the small clubs
downtown, the first thing we would
always do was head into the washrooms,
and come back and rejoin each other
with our noses burning and our brains
mercifully enveloped beneath a thick blanket
of powder snow stimulant.

But you just shook your head no,
puzzling me, until you turned your arm
just the slightest way towards me, and
for the first time I caught a glimpse
of your flesh; my breath caught jaggedly
in my throat at the sight of the veridian
scar road paved over your velvet veins
in a single, wild, frightening stitch.
There were twin sanguine waterfalls
cascading slightly diagonally down your
wrists; a pair of bleeding name-tags that
make it unbearable and humiliating for
you to reach out toward a stranger
when they say Hello and offer to shake
your hand; the Berlin wall dividing the
landscape into two separate empires
with mortifying palisades that would not
fall in 1989, or ever; Just another thing
you have to hide, another shameful secret,
like a tattoo of the name of a former lover.