It hurts my bones to love you.
It hurts to see the bottle-brush needles
like dried blood on the ground.
It hurts to drive in circles round my suburb
named for ashes on a field.
It hurts to think of children confused
by this masked and jabbing time.
It hurts to be a man,
it hurts to be a woman,
it hurts to live unknown;
it hurts to be caught in a net
where strangers chant your name.
It hurts to hear a song
about the death of mystery
and waiting on
another soul.
It hurts to sit in a park alone
with an unread book
on The Plague,
and a takeaway coffee,
and the words
of an old friend
on my iPhone.
It hurts to see a mad wind blow
its fury and its strangeness
through a gum tree
in an evening storm,
so dark the night before
the memory is lingering
way down inside of me.
It hurts to see
the morning sun again,
to feel it’s sweetness,
like a reassurance
and a wound.
Dreams come to me
and lose their order,
I need a shower
to wash uneasy feelings
off my waking skin.
It hurts, it hurts,
to be alive today.
It hurts the way it always hurt,
it hurts because
the ghosts are coming to us,
kissing our necks,
whispering
you foolish things,
this breathing world
was always meant
to turn you over,
like the tumbling
of ever-falling leaves.
It hurts to park
on Junction Road
opposite an empty school,
in the quiet softness
of another afternoon.
It hurts, it hurts,
to enter here
and depart
at an appointed time,
to lose our faces
and our hearts
beneath the great blue sky.
It hurts to write a poem,
will and testament,
journal note,
love letter folded
and released.
It hurts
to have known it all.
– Mark Mordue ©