Published November 23, 2011
The scars in my flesh have almost disappeared, it’s true—
The marks of my confusion
The whispered words behind friendly hands
And the secrets kept by a small pocketknife.
The patterns on my ankles
That I never bother to hide
Bloom from boredom,
And bring back memories of a comfy chair
And my trusty friend, the pocketknife.
Maybe I should name it.
It’s not that nobody cares—
I know they do, which is why
I can’t tell them
About my secret friendship with the nameless knife
But worried fingertips trace up my forearm
And touch the small brown lines that have almost disappeared
But I remember drawing the marks that paint my flesh
And I remember lying in bed,
Only more confusion nailing me shut
As I dig my short nails into my face.
And as we sit on the couch,
And you eye my legs,
I dare to say to you—
“Oh, I was playing soccer… and this girl, like,
Stepped on me…”
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141,325 Literary Works • 674,343 Reviews
Though I write it, I do not tend to gravitate toward reading depressed poetry (after all one can only take so much right?) but I am really glad that I did choose to go through with reading this one. The beginning couple stanzas were a little rough and I found myself thinking "Here we go again," but as I continued I was enthralled by the personification of the knife. The fact that it was nameable made it seem almost as if it was the controlling force in the rest of the story, and what was behind the self-injury. The imagery and description of the scars also worked well for me toward the end. And I thought the quote was perfect, it served as a good closer and was just cliched enough to seem real or like anyone who is traumatized that way would say it. All in all I did enjoy it, and thanks for the surprise.
Thers
First off, I LOVED the ending quotation. It really did a good job at bringing the entire thing together, and it cleared many things up. The use of the word "like" in there certainly helped, because it gave the feel that this person is a pretty normal teenager, with a teenager's diction and all that that entails. There is also that pause in there, which a lot of people who lie definitely do, adding to the realism.
And while that last quote adds to the feel of this person being average. the rest of the poem tells us that the opposite is true. This person is abused, both physically and emotionally, and everything points to that. It's very dark, and frankly pretty unsettling. But that's great, and I'd love to see more from you.
Hi
Ok well this, is a good poem. There are a lot of things that I couldn't get, firstly what's the poem about ? I cant seem to figure the ending out it's sort of vague, the other thing is I'm sure your ideas were good but you haven't executed them good enough. I mean it's sort of bland and doesn't make me jump out of my chair, I hope you get what I mean. Maybe you wanted to tell something else in the poem too but I couldn't find that plus the poem is sort of unattractive. I mean there isn't much rhyming or sentence structure that would keep me reading on.
I may have sounded harsh but I've given my advice sincerely and I hope it helps.
Zaid.