The scars are still on my thighs.

The knife is still in my hand.

Even though it’s in a dumpster 6 years ago,

It beckons me from on the shelf at the store where I bought it.

Do you know the heartbreak

Of holding temptation

And setting it down?

Of throwing depression into a dumpster

And having it follow you home?

The hopelessness of knowing

The knife is not an object,

But an idea you can’t get rid of.

The knife becomes your fingernails,

Becomes alcohol,

Becomes a fight you didn’t mean to have,

Becomes the mirror you stand in front of

While you tear yourself apart.

Becomes you.

I am the knife,

And the dumpster,

And the mirror.

I am the pain,

And the healing.

The depression, 

And the overcoming. 

This morning when I looked in the mirror,

There was something different about me.

I leaned in closer to inspect -

And noticed an opalescent shimmer in my hair.

One thin white line among thousands of brown ones.

I gasped, “How beautiful.”

I searched through strands to be sure,

And found it - almost translucent in its thinness.

I plucked it,

Just to hold it in my hand.

As I inspect it from different angles,

It plays with light like a crystal.

I wrap it around my fingers,

A strand of time itself.

How mystical it is to grow older,

How glorious.

Naked on the bathroom floor,

I’m surrounded by every color sharpie I own.

Originally purchased in high school for a craft project.

I remember feeling guilty about spending $23 to have all 18 colors,

But I was desperate, even back then, for my world to be more colorful.

I pick up a green sharpie and write “psycho” on my thigh.

With a purple one, I write, “absolutely worthless”.

A pink one - “I hate myself”.

One-by-one I use all 18 colors to cover my limbs,

Word by tortured word,

In all the horrible thoughts bubbling through my mind today,

Desperate to feel maybe like it’s not all in my head.

In grey I write… “Kill yourself.”

The orange sharpie shakes as down my shins I write, 

“Who even cares?”

“No one will save you,”

In aqua waves of cursive.

On one foot I write,

“I don’t want to be here.”

On the other - “RUN.”

As if I have anywhere to go.

“Fuck everything.” in bright red.

“I hate myself.” in lavender.

“I hate everyone.” in lime green.

“I want to die.”

“Please.”

On my ribs I write,

“I can’t breathe.”

“Whore” - on my hips.

“S-L-U-T” in black across my chest.

On my wrist I confirm,

“This is a cry for help.”

In case anyone would ever see me like this,

And have any doubts.

I add a dashed line down my forearm as if to say cut here.

I decorate my body -

The bright colors clashing with each other,

And I realize I am no longer these thoughts.

Covered in hatred and self pity,

I am exhausted of phrases to show my despair,

My mind is finally at peace.

Earlier I had imagined a lifeless body would be my last art project.

That I would slice open the dashed line,

And hope someone understood that I had to do it.

A colorful, gruesome finale for an unfulfilled artist’s life.

But a guilty $23 on craft supplies saved me,

By making a few hours more bearable.

Looking at myself in the mirror,

I cried for all cruelty that I show myself,

And all of the places in the world that it comes from.

Nested in my head, these insults felt so true,

Especially the more they echoed,

But externalized on my skin I can see that they are such a small part of who I am.

With relief, I sobbed.

As I sobbed, I showered,

Scrubbing these thoughts from my skin,

These words finally feel temporary,

Even in permanent marker they’ll wash off my skin,

So much faster than they’ve washed off my sensitive heart.

I remember once again,

It is creativity, not violence, that will save us.

I am communing with my inner self,

We are having tea,

Chatting about topics only we care about and are excited about.

It’s nice to get on paper the things we care about,

So we can see later,

When we’ve forgotten,

Out there in the dizzy world.

I write to feel less alone.

To clarify my own voice and thoughts into something more concrete.

I write to remember.

I write to forget.

To explore.

Writing helps me share who I am,

How I think,

What I feel.

I write to distract myself from where I am,

To go somewhere old or new.

I write to laugh and cry and be human.

I write to try to understand how other people feel.

When I don’t write,

My mind feels like a file cabinet

With too many papers shoved in.

When I don’t write,

I forget my voice.

My thoughts fall out of my mind

Like a bottomless hourglass.

I write because poets are cool,

Writers - majestic.

I write because my handwriting tells its own story.

I write to tell my own story.

I write when I’m too in love,

Or too angry, or too sad, excited,

To do anything else.

I’ve written poems to explain how I feel when I had no other way.

I write to get it all out.

I write to fall in love,

In love with writing,

In love with myself.

I learn to be on my own side.

To answer my own questions.

I control the story, the pacing, the setting.

I can leave at any time.

I write because I roller skate,

And because I’m human,

And because Eva Cassidy died too young.

I might too.

Or I might get 60+ years to perfect a craft I love,

To keep seeing the world in new light.

To keep seeing the world become new again,

In each tiny moment -

Find the uniqueness and the universal,

And merge them until everything is both.

I am a spine furtively fortified

By growing towards the sun

Every morning as the fog dissipates

I play the harp in my diaphragm

In a garden of fearless future plans

In reality, it’s just my apartment

Brimming with thriving houseplants

Now that I’ve learned

To check for water in the soil

Before blindly pouring more in.

I am self-designed durability,

Unpicked skin. Untorn cuticles.

I traded the safety of self-doubt for a new adventure,

Knowing trust lives in my walking stick spine.

I am ideas blooming

In lightbulb buns of expansive curls.

Thoughts and images spilled on paper.

An unfinished puzzle,

Is an obscured masterpiece.

I am a clearing haze.

My mind reflects my environment,

Same as the ocean with the sky.

I am loving boundaries, like

“I prefer not to be swallowed whole.”

When structure gets tired,

I take breaks to dance to car horns.

I am fluent in coping mechanisms.

Master of quick pivots,

Queen of sidestepping wrecking balls.

Preferring creative strategies

For removing the abandoned structures

Of the things I used to believe.