Paper Cuts

Read a book, take an hour or two to put the book down thirty seconds in
To sit beneath the pages wondering why you can't focus
On anything but the paper cuts gliding across your finger tips pouring old memories into the gap that frightens and illuminates like a lamp made for camping that you use under the covers as a child

Unaware of the significance of the wounds inflicted in childhood, they're only paper cuts, only snow balls
Packed into an igloo in December on a street in a suburban town

Packed tight till they become undistinguishable, blending into each other like the sound of the songs on your father's car radio
Does he know? The cuts beneath the surface, how many people know and yell into the night only to find that the yell that shook their body with force and left their throat raw

was in their heads 

silent and louder than they know
Some people never reach under their skin to find themselves
The parts of themselves that are left untapped without serious trauma present

Gifted to us by who knows
Someone sadistic? Someone kind? What do they know about the world, about us?

Do they have paper cuts too?