When people ask me what I do

I tell them I read people by the soul

String them up by their sanity

And leave them to dry by a warmth

Only known by being understood

When you thought you were alone

 

I tell them I make people fall in love with me

Deeply

 

I tell them I am a haunted house

Not one you visit on Halloween

But a house

That is actually

Haunted

 

I nurse the kind of wounds

That don’t come from weapons

That can’t be healed in hospitals

The kind that MDs try and fail to medicate

 

I tell them I am a healer

Doing my work one dagger at a time

Carving pieces of people away

Because how else are you supposed to

Find where the hurt is

Except to show them their own heart

And say “here”

 

They always look at me

Shocked and terrified

They stutter, “Y-you get paid for that?”

I tell them that is not what they asked