CW: Self Harm, Intrusive Thoughts, Sexual Trauma

1. Physical

(a) cuts on knees that evade memory; mosquito bites gnawed by nails, the skin torn; a soft gouge on one temple from a plastic airplane broken on my skull and doused in a brother’s tears; a crescent moon under one eyebrow where blood ran wet down lashes to chapped lips.

(b) x-acto knives graduated from kirigami paper to tissue skin; nail clippers forced to bite; razor blades dismantled to react, reinvent, wreck; beer can lips that dove into fingerprint code; the singe of one cigarette.

(c) deep cleaves to unburden a chest; a chat about books before anaesthesia; after, drainage tubes and tension headaches while lying upright in bed for days; a flat expanse where nipples tuft with wire hair.

2. Mental

(a) I hang a placard around my neck to warn my psyche of the upsetting power of hurricane winds for blameless trees; to warn, more precisely, of the evil snickers and toothed grins that I have shelved away for possible use; to remind me of cunning dreams that snag on my attempts at innocence.

(b) at times, I’ve ended things then dammed up against the torrent that follows (no survivors); these scars take the form of apologies.

(c) my dreams are haunted by children who hold my hand and whisper in my ear with wide eyes, their hair in shimmering curtains like fairy dust; they threaten me.

3. Phantom

(a) patterns in the wrinkled fissure below my clit, the nameless source I touch & say not here as caution against ill-begotten memories; a tomb erected in the throb, a scythe-swipe at dry fields, a droning overture; the penis, a dirty weed.

(b) trypophobia prickles under my skin; tinnitus presses on me with live wire hands; synaesthesia is profuse with finger-paint.

(c) the crystal black of lonesome, cold galaxies that has buoyed me towards the Styx.