Dissed

by Christopher Seid

You can spend years looking
over that wound, in isolation,
licking your room. Only
your former classmates

flipping through back and white
pages of yearbook windows
care — unconscious or not
of the blacklit noon.

No one asks to be hurt
like that, on the receiving end
of a metaphysical bitchslap.
It’s your test to touch the edge

with the toe of your boot
and miss the shifting sea —
cumulus clouds accumulating
like egrets of foam

on a wheezing tide. It’s okay
to carry that burn as a crescendo,
birthmark that never deflates.
It’s your right to trade, to toss

in a hole all the pain
of a star’s stain — five–fingered
floodrush, nickprint on
the bleeding page.