With the Worst

I didn’t cry, I was upset but I didn’t cry. Once I started, I didn’t stop. I just wanted to watch my life blood spill from the clean mess of lines, making it look like a patch was taken before it let gravity take hold and flow downwards. I watch with intrigue and delight as my baby blue flannel sheets soak it up greedily. There’s no pain and I continue drawing the magic lines. I draw and I draw and I draw then… I see black.

I wake, I feel dizzy, I see black, pitch black stitched perfectly together, not an ounce of light in the entire room. I take the silver out of where it’s stuck in my skin. I hide it, walk to the bathroom and admire the art. It looks like a massive block of uneven red pen marks, it’s welted and I notice the life blood all over my hands. I wash and I wash and I wash, staining the water red.

He wakes me, school time, I lock my door and look at the black on my sheets, the black screaming my sin. The colour life blood goes after a night of rest. Shorts to cover the art, the art we don’t display. Black bandages in the bin, made stiff by the dry life blood. Silver crusted red and black, hidden for another night. I pile clothes on top. I pile and I pile and I pile until it’s hidden.

Material rubbing the art, a constant pained reminder of last night’s feeling of hurt and anguish, of the volcano of built up pressurised emotions with a breakdown of catastrophic levels. Where physical pain symbolises emotional pain and life blood shows that everything will be okay. It hurts more what I walk. So I walk and I walk and I walk, until walk I can no longer.