Nothing Sweet
The first time I cut myself
I felt like a cliché.
Like I was playing a game
where the world was the cat and I was the mouse
Like—smile, smile
because the world always gets better
when it can see your yellow teeth.
When I cut the second time
I forgot what it felt like to be loved
But I knew—I knew what it felt like to lose
to be lost in my own head
never quite sure how to get out
I would wish there were streetlights in
the cavities of my thoughts
or at least a street where lamplight
could guide me back into reality
back to the trust that my blood had all but washed away.
And the third time I cut
I hated myself
I was like the dark side of the moon
Where I knew I knew I could
I couldn't even though
to every moon there are a hundred hundred stars.
The fourth time I cut—well
I can't remember how it felt
but I remember the way it looked
I was pale and lukewarm
and I knew beyond a doubt that I had shrunken
my back was arched
I was a living cliché, the walking dead.
But I remember that piano playing inside of me
waning as the cutting kept going
kept going—it keeps going
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