Tattoo

There isn’t a lot right about an obsession. It’s not like, like it’s something essential to life – and even those can be cast aside in favour of a prettier exterior. I wouldn’t recommend my life to anyone, I wouldn’t say that a sleepless night is better than one spent in dreams, or that air tastes better than food. I just; it’s mine.

That’s what they need to understand. There isn’t some outer force telling me to do this; it’s all me. I chose this, me. I’m aware of the downside, I’m too aware of the upside that never seems to come, and I still chose it. My decision. And you can’t change that, you can’t say things I already know or lie, and expect me to suddenly realise that I could live a different way. Because I can’t. I am me and I do not like myself.

It’s not too hard to understand that I’m trying to change myself for the better and sad eyes and slow words are just getting in the way.

I’m so ugly, but that’s okay

I run a hand over the small fox padding over the outside of my hip bone. Maybe next time a cross – or a wolf, or maybe a lion; sprawled across my back and sparrows flying north to my neck, small chains dripping from their feather wings.

I could become a canvas, a thoughtless display of artistic scrawls and minimal interpretations; a walking mass of colourful fur and feathers, words and symbols. I had enough skin, and I had enough time; I was going nowhere and maybe this could take me somewhere. A place I didn’t have to be me. A place where I could become nothing more than art, no heed paid to rolls of greed or lines of sorrow.

The knife glinted at me from its current position; tucked under a book, an empty cup smelling strongly of coffee balanced precariously on it. I stretched over, knocking the cup to the floor as I slid the knife from underneath the green backed book.

A Town Like Alice.

A hawk perhaps, or a raven to symbolise thoughts lost and freedom gained, would look pretty carved in red.