slit my wrists with ink

i wrote the word 'love' on my arm

twirly with hearts for flourish

in every attempt at being artistic

but i didn't know who i was writing it there for.

i marked my wrist with a pretty word

just so i could say i did it, that i'm honoring the day.

but the disconnect i was left with

was written all over me,

scribed into telltale limbs that needed validation.

some girl somewhere had taken blade to flesh

right below her capable hands

because they'd called her ugly,

because she'd believed them;

pain in person to equal pain in soul

and she could hide in her sleeves

so no one would know

of her mutilation --

soon to become afternoon ritual.

when the boy she liked

agreed with her toughest critics

she slit those shiny wrists in the bathtub

and she slit them good

so she'd never have to slit them again.

she'd never have to endure such bullshit again.

they found her lying deep in her sickness and her sins,

which they hadn't seen until she'd sworn them all off for life

in the name of death

and all the legacies she might have left

were erased from the history of the earth

as if she'd never been a part of it.

it seemed reason enough to slit my wrists with ink

for only a day, for only a day

which to her had been more of an eternity

of insults damaging her worth.

i dug the pen in as far as it would go

into malleable skin,

pouring bloody ink into bloody veins,

carving the word in so it wouldn't leave,

a word she hadn't known,

a word that might have spared her life.

i scraped the word 'love' across my arm

pulling pain from her undead flesh,

remembering a stranger

who would have written 'love' on her arm

if the world had shown her any.

[this was written following the "To Write Love On Her Arms" event one year, a day where people are encouraged to write "love" on their arms to express their support of suicide prevention. i was feeling disconnected to it all even though i wanted to participate, so i wrote about it until i found some sort of meaning. i quite dislike the final line myself, too cliché for my tastes, but i didn't know where else to take it. xo]

04.2010