Pariah

Wandering the sultry path,
Not even a year,
With thoughts as muddled
as the bleary horizon line,

How curious it is to encounter,
The King of the land I left,
Himself, a pariah.

Debridement

I gingerly slice,
into the necrotic tissue,
frostbitten by your touch,
pulling apart the eschar,
the burned bits,
ruddy with congealed blood,
down to the vasculature,
to the place that still hurts and feels pain.

Because healing goes from the inside out,
And numbness conceals a festering wound.