Like Me Poem by Charles Malcolm

Flashes of you slice through my eyelids
like a rapist's face.
A three word sentence that you slur in passing
tosses sparks inside of my darkened mind
for the most divided second
like a streetlight glancing off of the edge of a sharpened blade.
Your predator's laugh echoes through my chest.
A flurry of steel-toed boots,
pummeling my trunk and disappearing
before I can grasp and hold them close.

You are beating me to death,
wherever you are and whoever you are with.
Such impact from tiny fists.
You are impossibly unaware.

I tell myself that you would stop if you knew,
but it might be the only thing that you know.

Like this
and
like me.