Scars

(Please note this poem is about self-harm, if you are at all sensitive to it, please don't read)

I remember the first time I held a knife to my wrist.

I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7.

Young enough that I shouldn’t have been doing that.

Young enough that my problems were too small for that.

But they washed over me like a babe before the sea

They tumbled me and turned me upside down

And I didn’t know the way out.

No one knew the way in either.

I remember that night when I was 15.

Many knives had been held between the first time and 15.

I remember how words,

Just simple words,

Had caused me to sit down

Sit down and write a note.

I opened the bottle.

The phone rang.

My problems were still not the problems of majority.

They were not large unscaleable mountains

But I had small hands and feet.

No guide to show me.

I was once again drowning.

 And I remember the last time.

The smell of my own flesh burning

The shapes carved there

Red badges demonstrating to the world I was broken

That at 17 I couldn’t fight my battle

I was a matador crippled by some unknown force.

Facing the horns of a bull with no name and no shape.

It felt too good.

Felt too whole.

Felt too honest.

I vowed never again.

Never again because I knew if I ever tried again

If I ever took that second step into the darkness

I’d never look back.

I’d find myself too far down that path

Or maybe I’d fall into that darkness.

Not a single scar remains.

No scratch upon this neon skin of mine.

But sometimes I wish there was.

Wish there was something to show the mountains I climbed.

The bears and tigers and bulls I fought.

But there is nothing.

Nothing but a head full of ideas

And a heart still completely locked.