I don’t. You just read a lot of my PTSD poems,
I say. I don’t know how to write a PTSD poem.
PTSD makes it so you can’t write. Instead you
just sit there, staring at the newspaper, not able
to read. Instead, people read me like the news.
They read my scars, one that someone told me
looks Arabic, another that someone told me
looks Coptic. My scars are trying to spell some-
thing on my body. I think right before I die,
I’ll cut myself by mistake and then, right there,
it will be so easy to read, the words on my body,
as long as you are a dedicated polyglot. My body
will be a poem, is a poem, in a book where all
of the pages are bent, stained, faded, pregnant
with abuse. I sit in church sometimes, staring
at the Bible on the back of the pew in front of
me. It looks exhausted, upside-down, like it’s
retired, but still here because it needs the money.