Refund Requested

You think the package is a gift
           but it encloses a violence, a rupture
that took place even before your awareness

          of it. A carelessness, tossed from one
overseer to another; which then delivers bits of broken 
          glass to puncture the flesh on the tip of your finger— 

That's all it takes to set the blood loose: your own
         undoing, they'll say, as you open the box to see
if you can finally claim what it was you thought 

        you purchased. You wince at the momentary pain 
before pressing a dish towel or bandage strip across
       the wound— No matter how familiar to the tired

of disappointment, disappointment keeps 
      showing up like a history that keeps repeating itself.