Content Warning // Self-harm

 

On a work day    my eyes are red from a lack of sleep

I put the exponent drug on my tongue

and imagine chewing a razor blade

In reality my gums bleed from the dentist

In reality I sit in a Target parking lot

and put a razor blade in my mouth

Just to see─nicked─I slit myself in bed

and go to the hospital and stay there

for 12 days eating lithium  On day

three I slice at my wrist with

the image of a mountain 

I’ve been storing in my head for 9 weeks

I carve open my arm with a makeshift knife

and shovel birdfeed into the wound for three hours

I eat the whole cafeteria   I eat the doctors and computer

database that holds the insurance claims    I eat the insurance

companies   I vomit blood and push the blood and piss into

the corner of my appetite    I am liberated from the hospital

and all mental illness    I am now an idiot monk who lives with snakes

I am now a Morse code tapping in the nuclear war night   Bleed into

the purple void     Bleed into the restaurant toilet    Bleed into January

I hole up in my room and base my fashion off of 1930’s farm silos

I buy Goodwill cups so I can shatter glass all weekend

I pretend I can’t swim and take swimming lessons

I fuck the instructor who is a cutter

I marry the instructor who cuts me with everything she has

We put blades in our mouths

We go shopping and discuss blade worship

After a bad cutting episode we are no longer married

We meet up every five years to smoke heroin and discuss

our high school lunch rooms   I am not bound to her

I am not bound to myself   I buy a rowboat to prove this

I untie the rowboat and sail off towards the San Juans

I sit in the row boat for 50-years eating tuna and crying

Cold winds beating down

Shining rugged angel

I am given the hammer and the bag

I choose both 

I lick a can of tuna

I rock the boat

to self soothe in the black water