Some people turn themselves around. Wrap up they're gangrene parts, throw them away and grow new limbs, twisting and turning but eventually standing on new legs.

I told a girl I lost my ears. I haven't been able to hear love words in months. All I here is chatter chatter chatter and the sounds of cars backfiring.

She tells me she has leprosy. She doesn't mind the exclusion, Outcasts see things a little differently, she says. But she misses her fingers. She told me she once did great things with them. Stroke hair and count her baby's toes and write grocery lists.

I meet a boy and tell him of what I've lost. He says he's gained a new set of eyes. He's been seeing his girlfriend everywhere, but she's been dead for three years. We sleep together and in the rush to get away I leave my vocal chords.

He hears a voice when he wakes up and no one's there. He finds it under his bed and picks it up and puts it in his jacket pocket.

I start buying medical books. I buy them from a girl who falls in love every thirty minutes because she has memory loss. I meet a man who is color blind because his wife took it during the divorce. She now sees in technicolor and finds love something boring.

Some people recover, walk out of things with new hands and new lips to find new mouths and freshly mended hands.

I decide that I am nothing but wear and tear.
I let my limbs fall off
and leave them where they lay.









(old)