I am no longer what I heal (2025)

I am no longer what I heal

Published online, August 2025.

Excerpt from This place that I am which eludes me.

 

there was a time

when I spoke to mend

when every word was a stitch

clumsy

too tight

 

now

I speak from outside

I no longer aim for the wound

I no longer call it

by its name

 

I no longer have a name for it

what I have left

what I still carry

in places

 

the pain has shifted

it has lodged itself in the past

like a piece of furniture that is no longer moved

but that one knows

with eyes closed

 

i am no longer what i heal

I am what emerges from it

what continues

what still leans

 

I no longer wait for the end

I have passed through it

it did not close the door

it left the light

and the folds

 

I look at myself through

what I have stopped seeking

and I see another body

not new

not old

a body

pierced by passage

that walks

 

I have not healed

I have molted

I have made room

 

what I heal

lives elsewhere

under another name

perhaps

without a name at all

 

and I, I am

this moving thing

that no longer wants to return

but that remembers the journey there