you not are a battlefield but i am a gun

you stare solemnly out of the window,
telling me that you just feel empty:

i think of the months i have spent
levering chunks of myself out,
chipping off pieces and pressing them
into the jigsaw shaped holes of you
like a nurse on a battlefield pressing the bandage down

you have buttoned your jacket up tight
to keep your wounds in and the doctors out,
you are a veteran in your own right and yet
i want nothing more than to bite your scars open
and hang your swords over the fire
like two curved metal cadavers.

i want to sew your pain into history,
and amputate you from it. (you are not a jigsaw,
or a soldier, but i am holding a hacksaw.)