I want to fix you, make you whole, like a sentence-
give you predicate, subject, and verb. Perhaps,
if words could heal, I would.

If words could heal,
I’d spend every hour in practice of languages of the
world and then create those not yet uttered;
Give hours of my day speaking to the moon, the stars, and the sun,
then parch the ears of rabbits and corn.

If words could heal, then bard I’d be
and run my tongue over your wound
twice with soliloquy, metaphor, and synecdoche.
I’d shoot conjunctions and similes into your veins,
pour ink blotted monologues like castor oil down your throat,
and whisper subtle sweet nothings into an auditory IV
while stroking synapse through your hair.

If words could heal, I’d wrap you in allegory,
feed you phonetic alphabet soup, and cover you
with the radiation of every acronym and abbreviated stem I could find –
x-ray, MRI, CAT scan the broken parts so that I could insert
the missing pieces anew.
I would dance my pen across your body
like discourse on paper,
bandage you with the cluttered pages of Hawthorne and Emerson,
and bathe you in lilac-lullaby-lackadaisical lost syllables
[because I know how much you love the lolling elle sound]
lolling lovely lathery over sore muscles(/languid ligaments?).

If words could heal, I’d break every evil bone in man’s body
and splint it with the golden rule in five different religious tongues;
pre-emptively nurse your would-be scars with preamble and prefixes.
I’d pump every paradox into resuscitation of your broken heart,
but baby, it doesn’t work that way.

So, I will hold you because although arms do not heal either,
I hope that you will hear the pang of my own persistent heart
and realize that this irritating tick, this rhythm, this beat, it does not stop –
and that life with it, is going on.
It goes on at a rate as constant as the ocean’s shift, so catch up.

Let babble and insecure chatter stop you no more.
Take my words for the moment and pocket them
or toss them behind you like a tired cigarette
left to burn out and die like memories of our worst conversations
played back in our heads one too many times.

Do whatever you will because they
are just words and they
cannot heal,
but, know that in time, you will.

(2010)