SPLIT by Katy Whittingham

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Split

I didn't know I was killing me,
until I was dead, strange

how pain goes only so far,
before life's tightrope bends,

a numbing drum penetrates
the head and calls for end

to all distinction. When
exactly do the veins stop

pulsing against the knotted
sheet, and when does the purplish

ring around the neck set in?
Does it look like I imagined

a wine stain under the skin?
What is the taste of wasted air

puffing out of bloody lips,
bitten in earned anguish?

The experience has eluded
me again, inside the darkness

of my death, I only know how
I was made to live.

Katy Whittingham is a MFA student at Emerson College in Boston,
Massachusetts, with a concentration in poetry. She has been Circle Magazine, Aileron, Pedestal Magazine.
E-Mail: katy_whittingham@emerson.edu

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