Peace

I step in a field full of little lives

Grassy stains on my fingers, green and oily

There is blood is on my hands but I can only see peace.

SNAP

I stop and sit in the green

I want the blood off my hands.

I want it off I want to cut it off

What would happen if you did,

If you cut them off?

What kind of person would you be?

If you cut your fingers off, the blood drains from the wound, 

down your hand, dripping to the ground

Are you still there? 

Are you still you?

Iron,

That’s what it would smell like,

The blood

Are those fingers you? 

Have you lost a part of who you are?

Have those fingers lost their humanity because they lost you?

If you cut off your hand; leave it with your fingers, 

the blood draining from your arm, falling on your severed hand, dripping to the ground,

Are you still there?

Are you still you?

Fire,

A burning sensation crawling down the limbs, That’s what it feels like?

That metallic liquid.

If you cut off your arm; leave it with its fallen parts, 

the blood draining down your body, through the arm, past the hand, dripping to the ground

Is the arm still you? 

Is the flesh still yours?

Rivers,

The blood carves rivulets of red down the arm,

That burning metallic liquid

How many of the parts have to be there for you to be you?

Is it your whole body,

Just your head?

If you cut off your head and it falls to the floor,

The blood draining down from your neck, down your chest and past your legs,

Is the head you?

Is the body you?

If you get spread so far that you are atoms, spread across lightyears.

Each atom helping form a blanket of particles covering parsecs

Are each of those atoms you?

Have you been spread too thin?

If you get squished back together, 

Your atoms re-congealing into a person again,

Is that person you? 

Are those atoms no longer yours?

If you die; let your body rot away to bones,

Your flesh becoming one with the earth, unable to bleed any longer

Are the bones still you? 

Or did “you” leave with your flesh?

Are you your parts?

Are you all of you?

Are you just a concept, just the sum of your thoughts and emotions? 

Is pain an ugly thing?

Is pain wrong?

Is pain bad?

I lie in a luscious field full of lives.

Each life cultivated through pain,

And it’s beautiful.