This Poem is About the Douchebag Who Dumped Me a Week Before Christmas

the turbine hall, tate modern

by ellora sutton

I would describe Mire Lee’s Open Wound

but I am learning to trust my reader

and anyway, this poem isn’t about Mire Lee’s Open Wound.

It’s about being obliterated out of basic decorum, it’s about

sitting cross-legged on the gallery floor,

crying in public on a Thursday morning

and not one single elderly man or woman has said

cheer up love, you’re too pretty to cry because I am too pretty to cry

or I thought I was.

Did I mention it’s the week before Christmas?

Did I mention I came here

because my therapist cancelled last-minute?

I didn’t come here to see Mire Lee’s Open Wound,

I came here because I had nowhere else to go.

I stare at Mire Lee’s Open Wound until I see a shrine.

Until I might reasonably ask it to heal me.

Were there ever horses?

Somewhere between slipway and slaughterhouse,

small children in chartreuse tabards

trickle down the slope towards the ghosts.

How to explain this to a child?

We all carry this inside of us.

Even those you believe incapable of harm.

Even your mother

who halves grapes and slices apples for you

to keep you alive.

A woman on a video call says it’s about pain

or I think she does. I hover above

my emptied matches, more ghost than flame

but still, a little flame

and read the text panel for Mire Lee’s Open Wound –

When do individuals become anonymous?, and

Why does it sometimes hurt to love?