From the ages

of twelve to fifteen

I wore somewhere

between

twelve to fifteen bracelets

to cover the bandages

on my left wrist.

Luckily,

and unluckily, I suppose,

that was somewhat

fashionable

for that era.

I was a walking

‘Help Wanted’ poster,

hoping someone

would see beyond

the giggles and

hyperactive tendencies.

Looking back,

the public school system

requiring tetanus shots

is probably what

saved my life.

the payphone dial tone

the click of slippers

that are soft coughs

on waxed floors

near hospital windows

where people are cured

but not like you

not the inbetween

where sickness still

lingers long after

the IV drip

releases it’s last gasp

the cry of the depressed

I have a tendency to romanticize people.

I take what little I know about them, the barest of strokes.

And add color until I've painted a landscape.

This time, I didn't.

I took what I knew and decided a sketch is fine.

It doesn't always have to be a Monet.

He was brilliant in color himself.

All red hair and blue eyes.

He stood 6'3, standing tall and standing proud.

He fed me lies, fed me beautiful stories and myths.

Made himself to be a God.

But gods don't lie.

Gods don't cheat.

He hurt me in ways I might never heal from.

But more than that, I hurt myself.

I believed in a truth someone else created.

He painted his own mural and told me it was a picture.

Cameras don't lie, but boys do.

The first time I hurt myself, I was seventeen. It was an accident, really—I didn't mean to wander into that room. Like most seventeen-year-olds, I'd been feeling misunderstood and forlorn, anxious and angry. That night was particularly dark, no moon shone in the sky, no stars managed to pry their way through the thick cover of clouds. I'd gone to the library, sneaking in through an unlocked door in the back, making my way through shelves of dimly-illuminated books. Ahead of me, I could see a light creeping out from under a door. I didn't remember that door. Curious, I'd opened it slowly, softly, pushing myself inside. Before I fully entered the space, I felt a strong sensation of hesitation. I felt that someone, somewhere, was trying to tell me to leave. I didn't leave. Curiosity killed the cat, and I was undoubtedly a cat person.

It was morning when they found me, when the librarian pushed open the door to the tiny supply closet and saw my crumpled form sitting motionless between the brooms. My parents asked what happened. I said I didn't remember. I lied. My first scar appeared soon after, an inch-long line right on my chest, right above my heart. It hurt, a lot.

The second time I hurt myself, I was twenty. It wasn't an accident, not quite. I'd been visiting home from college, spending my winter break with family and memories alike. An argument had broken out between my father and I one night, and I'd left the house in a fuming blaze to go on a walk. I was in the wrong, and I knew it, and after a while my rage was replaced with guilt. The guilt stung, it hurt, and I embraced the pain—I felt I deserved it, being such an awful daughter.

I hadn't intended to visit the library, but as I was lost in thought, my feet brought me to that building, that large brick building, and around the back to the door that used to be unlocked. I checked. Unlocked. I went in.

I couldn't tell you why I went in, I really couldn't. I think I was still curious, still dumb and curious, and I felt like I deserved more pain, so I walked in the direction of the door I'd gone through three years earlier. Sure enough, like magic, like dark magic, I soon saw the light creeping out from underneath the door. I paused before entering, asking myself, steeling myself.

I pushed inside, and I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was lying on the floor of the old supply closet, empty aside from a bucket and a mop. Funding wasn't very good for the library, back then. I left the library at dawn, before most people were up, and made my way back home for reconciliation and a mug of hot coffee. My second scar appeared soon after, another inch-long line that ran across the first one, forming an 'X' over my heart. It hurt, a lot.

The third time I hurt myself, I was twenty-seven. I hadn't visited home for years, graduate school and marriage had kept me busy. It was the holidays again, and I'd brought my husband to see my hometown. We were staying with my parents, in my old bedroom, and I felt happy, happy. I felt happy, until suddenly I didn't.

I've always had issues with emotional swings, but I'd hoped the worst days were behind me. That night, I left the house in frustration with myself. I left the house and marched to the library, marched through the unlocked door, marched to the light. I was getting an advanced degree in biochemistry, and I justified my rather reckless behavior by telling myself I was merely conducting another experiment to verify and replicate the results of my previous two.

I pushed the door open. That time, I didn't lose consciousness. I could see everything with blinding clarity, except I wasn't sure what everything really was. Colors were distorted, shapes seemed magnified in peculiar manners, and hazy forms floated past me. I felt as though I'd stumbled into a surreal, absurd, messed-up painting, some demonic world designed to ensnare the curious, designed to kill cats, and I was undoubtedly a cat person. The lights were far too bright, and my eyes began to grow uncomfortable. I wondered why I didn't black out, wondered whether I'd built up some sort of tolerance to the weirdness.

I hadn't. One of the forms floated in my direction, staring without eyes, unblinking, and I felt my legs begin to crumple beneath me. I saw a knife blade flashing, I felt a sharp pain on my chest, right above my heart, right in the location of my first two scars. Something made a horrible noise, almost like a drill, and my chest began to hurt even more. There was blood, there was so much blood.

I didn't recognize my heart when they pulled it out of me. It was far too fleshy and disgusting, far too fatty. I blacked out then.

I think I woke up after that, though I'm still not quite sure. The world doesn't seem quite so real as it used to, and there are subtle differences that I can't quite describe. Maybe I'm dead, maybe I'm not quite me anymore.

There are three scars on my chest now. They hurt, a lot.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Although I didn’t realize what it was, throughout senior year of high school I went in and out of depression. I distinctly remember once when, alone, I nearly impaled my right lung in front of my puppy (who stared at me transfixed) as a stormy ambience lightly played in the background. The cut would have been clean, as I had sucked in so much that I could make out the pale impression of my ribs against my skin. When my puppy whimpered, I decided to stay alive a little longer. As I made this decision, the knife slipped from my hands and my mind observed it fall in slow motion. As it lie firmly embedded in the kitchen’s wooden floor, I regret not trying to have intervened as it fell. To this day the disconcerting scar remains, ruining the cheery lavender countertops and richly lit space.

Four years later, my senior year of college: I felt alone and overwhelmed in a school of 18,000 students. I couldn’t figure out where I would fit after I graduated, so I consumed as many 500 mg blue gel Ibuprofens as I could before falling asleep. I hadn’t even gotten under my covers--I had lay myself lightly on top--peaceful as reclining into a coffin.

My last act of compassion--my suicide letter to my parents, saved my life. Medics woke me up and hurried me to Beth Israel where I was immediately given fluids and underwent testing. My family from around the region came to comfort me. The fluid from the IV nearly drained itself entirely into me and I uncomfortably bloated. When I removed it, the flood of blood was as dark as office ink. It was so hypoxic that even exposed to air, it dried as dark as it had bled out. I had always been great at holding my breath--but no one could believe it. A Marvel-made hero, from then on, I never grew tired--For the next two years I would run every morning and only muscle fatigue or boredom could stop me--I never had a cramp, sweat, or was reduced to gasping ever again. A new definition for “blue-blood”?

!(tw: s.h)!

I broke last night.

I broke because I looked at my leg;

Noticed that my scar,

The one I was repeatedly told I would hate,

The one I kept loving,

Is fading.

Fading into the background of my skin.

Now that my skin is peppered by hundreds of other scars it seems to sink.

The part of my history that I remember.

The funny story that accompanied it.

The people attached to it's memory.

They seem to sink.

The jarring sight it used to create seems muted now.

Because of the multiple times I broke.

When I broke and so I broke my skin.

Over, and over again.

Should I hate it now that it seems so much less?

Should I have framed it?

Drawn a box around it to ensure nothing could reach it's colour?

It's still there;

Still a large reminder of a mistake.

But I miss the people from the mistake.

And the scars around it are no mistake.

At first glance it reminds me of camouflage.

At second glace it seems otherworldly.

At third glance I no longer search for it.

I still yearn for it but I know it is no longer lonely;

It is alone in itself,

But no longer lonely.

Should I be happy?

I was told I should hate it.

Now you no longer "see" it,

You see the thin red lines around it.

All of those horizontal,

This one vertical.

Should I hate it more now?

Or is this more reason to adore it?

I cant't decide and so I colour outside of the box once more.

And I couldn’t feel any colder, with each drop of life, I come closer to the ultimate molder, on the nightstand, the candles smolder and I am drifting away

Try as I might, I find no reason to stay, I feel as though I just get in life’s way, beside the moonlight, the shadows sway and play games with my mind

There is no sweet solace to find, I am the very last of my own kind, there is nothing to be said, heard, nor signed, there is nothing that can be done

By now, the warm has absolutely run, it’s clotted, stopped, coagulation has begun, it came back; the demon I thought I had outrun, returned with a vengeance

Too far gone to hear the ambulance engines, but I can see clear as day my winter white tendons, I have been drawn to my end by warped mental extensions, metals, dead petals, sharp edges of pain, new dimensions

I snapped beneath the weight of my brain’s tensions, in black and white will be sorrowful mentions, antidepressants seemed like useless inventions, I still missed her and achingly so

I cursed myself, why did she have to go?!

My entire world stopped, but even so, somehow the wind continued to blow, I felt its icy breath caress my skin, blue with a touch of Death’s glow, I was gone not just right then, but seven years ago

And I guess sirens scream against the black night, yelling to me to put up a fight, but I can’t hear them and I can’t feel their fright, I can’t feel anything, not after tonight

And maybe against the window is splashed red and white light, but I can’t see it, my lids glued together deathly tight, how did they find me, no, this isn’t right, I wish to be with HER

To feel no more pain within my heart stir, no more stinging nettles, no more cardiac burr, no more sharpened metals, no more color in a blur

No more world to conquer

No more little beasts to purr

They lap the vermilion like it’s thickened salt water, gone are the breath-filled days of this daughter, how warm the skin was, the blood ran hotter, stream after stream after stream

This is more than a just nightmare of a feverish dream

For those I leave behind, I’m no longer stuck in between Heaven and Hell in this bleeding earthly scene, I am ethereal, I am an aerated queen

Not that I am of nobility-

That isn’t what I mean

No longer flesh and bone, not a single cell, not a gene

From now until eternity, my soul is unclean, holed and rotted, full of gangrene

I know that I will not ascend, but that knowledge could not forsake my end, I made the decision, I would not bend, so instead I entirely shattered

I am the product of a heart brutally battered, after she was taken, nothing ever mattered anymore, my life was utterly tattered and they all walked on tiptoes

Where she has gone, God only knows, she wasn’t stolen, she was one He chose, place me in the ground, a permanent pose

And so the wind still blows