It's Still Life

To Hurt is to Steal

The clinic lights hum —guilty, guilty as saints in hiding. 

The nurse peels back the bandage …to heal is to steal, you whisper it—not to her, but to the wound’s ruby grin, a slow eclipse hoarding your flesh like a miser of moonlight strands. 

Outside, crows heckle the parking lot, tallying debts in wingbeats, and you remember your wife’s dough-dusted hands, her murmurs “some thieves wear gloves of kindness,” while flour snowed across the kitchen, and all the time the stitches itch. 

The doctor calls it healing, but you know better—recovery is just the body laundering its curses. 

In the taxi home, your forehead fogs the window, streetlights blur into stolen rosaries—the driver’s radio hisses—a séance of interrupted apologies. 

You cradle this ache like a burglar’s deck of tarot: the Lovers reversed, a bent key, a map drawn in salt. Every throb a lockpick. Every wince, a spell.

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Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “Strand”  and dVerse Poets Prosery including the phrase “to hurt is to steal” although I’ve not linked it to dVerse because the word count exceeds 144, and in my opinion every extra word has earned its place.  Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.