Carried: Ulcerated Spots on the Skin (Eroded holes, open sores)

It works at the boundary, the surface where contact is decided, and keeps small breaches from finishing. Below the shame runs an old sum: affection is wanted badly and expected to end in injury, so reaching and flinching happen in one motion, and grievances are held rather than set down. Material older than memory is kept in circulation; what the shape asks for is permission to let a thing be over.

Let anyone close and something opens — so I stay just out of reach, ashamed of the reason.

Philoctetes, left on the island for a wound that would not close and a cry no one could stand to hear, though the war could not be finished without him. The task implied is return — to be brought back among people while still wounded, not afterwards.