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
Corbin Louis is a Seattle singer and poet. His work is an ode to survival. Through addiction and chronic pain, Corbin writes to rage on for the vulnerable. The artist is an MFA alumni of UWB and 2018 Jack Straw Writer’s Resident. His work has been featured in Best American Experimental Writing, Button Poetry and more. The author seeks to expand dialogues of disability and anti-capitalism. Ink becomes Molotov. War call and whisper. The poet lives.