Colosseum

I don't remember how I hurt myself,

The pain mine

Long enough for me

To lose the wound that invented it

As none of us knows the beauty

Of our own eyes

Until a man tells us they are

Why God made brown. Then

That same man says he lives to touch

The smoothest parts, suggesting our

Surface area can be understood

By degrees of satin. Him I will

Follow until I am as rough outside

As I am within. I cannot locate the origin

Of slaughter, but I know

How my own feels, that I live with it

And sometimes use it

To get the living done,

Because I am what gladiators call

A man in love—love

Being any reminder we survived.