I.
I am mascarading as a shadow, striking strangers blind.
The boy to my right is driving the pin on his name badge down through his thumb nail
and all the way through to the other side over and over.
His cuticles are the bloody rags of war veterans.
The jagged punctures are a million red eyes blinking.
My head won't be still -
it's a vibrating speaker.
The noise belching from my ears comprimises outside chords and the voice of every boy and every girl who has ever yearned for me with no reward.
I've got arms you'd DIE to crawl into.
II.
Fourteen years, I began to decorate blue-white virgin thighs - not always my own - with a straight razor:
LOVE ME. I'M SO SORRY. INTO OBLIVION.
I can't recall what any of it meant, but there is so much pain.
There is SO much pain.
III.
A strange boy with familliar wrinkled white jelly scars like stretch marks on his forearms
laughs hysterically and tells me,
his uncle...
in the front seat of a car...
what no child should EVER be forced to endure.
And all the furniture in his bedroom is covered in drawings of monsters,
and bad teenage poetry-in-inverted-commas.
I leave him to die.
IV.
My deepest cut is between my legs. It tore open with puberty and never healed.
One morning before school, I decide that I will remove this cancerous invasion.
The blood goes EVERYWHERE.
WE ARE NOT OKAY, WE ARE NOT FUCKING HAPPY,
I am a chainsaw and you are all cattle.
I am infected, and you're groping blind.
I've got arms you'd crawl into to die.
My lips are bleeding knuckles after a street fight.
V.
Sweetheart...
I am a box cutter trail, and your arms are a cathedral.
I'm lighting your candles, you're soaked through with sweat and singing a song you hate for me.
I can slit your life out (I can suck your lights out)
VI.
I love every hour of sleep I missed while I bled into rags to prevent waterfalls of myself from staining my sheets and your clothes.
VII.
I always think of this kid on the odd occasions that I wear purple. Quiet never-been-kissed fifteen nothing. He loves every split in my river bed, but shortly, my heart strings fuse to burning moody eratic tissue less deserving, and he sky dives from a length of rope public school oval.
On Self-Injury and Group Therapy: A Series of Short Stories
This was lying around on my computer. I'll probably never finish it. It's a tribute to a few people and moments that I always meant to write about and never did.
This was lying around on my computer. I'll probably never finish it. It's a tribute to a few people and moments that I always meant to write about and never did.
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Comments
1 - 10 of 10
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I think I learn something from everything you write
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While I'm not really sure what you could have learned from this, I'm glad that you did.
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welp. i think i am the boy in this poem.
it's a pretty true description of me from ninth grade. and... onward. it's a problem. usually when poeple write about self destruction it's terrible and totally untrue. this was pretty damn honest. -
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Which boy are you? I talk about a few of them here.
I'm glad you like it. Yes, it's very honest. It felt good to write it. -
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i think i related most to the one that laughs about his uncle.
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This is great. You misspelled candle as 'candel' though. But I love this. Especially I. and III. Thanks for sharing
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Thanks love, I'll fix that
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this is incredibly moving and it seems like you really understand the subject.
you grasped this immaculately. Its very fast-paced and unusual.
I noticed that in the phrase "never-been-kissed fifiteen nothing." fifteen had an extra fi, but other than that, I have nothing negative to say.
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Hahaha you're right, it does too, I'll fix that in a second
Thanks for picking up on that.
When you say it seems like I understand the subject, it's not a very insightful piece I'm afraid, it's just a collection of personal memories loosely tied together with a common theme. It isn't finished, there are more I wanted to include, but I don't know if I'll ever finish it. I didn't feel right posting it as a poem, since it seems to me to be more like a collection of short stories?
Thanks for reading, especially considdering how long it is.
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I don't know what to say other than this is extremely moving, and exactly what I needed to read right now.
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