Diffraction

I lie in the windowlight scattered 
by dark lines of the blinds like
I am a body of pruned limbs
that never grow back like they used to.
When you cut me open flat
on my back I awoke to
an empty chest and a crestfallen head.
Did you call it a job well done 
when I clawed the shroud over my pigment?
Sleep makes the best medicine and 
the sleepless know this which must be why
they loudly clamor to place
their minds at rest, but now
someone must put me under if I am to
grow sweet again. I'll be waiting
on this ocean bed until this oak hollows
or until this plane dries and this water shallows
or until I become light enough to meet the surface.
To then be picked up and held
until the child must let go and
I lay adrift on stillwater or until
time forgets us both and the shutters drop
again, directing where the light falls
leaving us half-illumined in parallel shadows
that conceal every red wound.