The Same Cut
Inspired by the writing prompt from Nimila the Inferno for ///// THE CUT /////
Let THE CUT be at the center of it.
What does the cut evoke?
What does it change, reveal, hide, return?
Where does it hurt?
Why does it stay?
For every cut that marked my skin, for the people who once marked my life.
Each left its trace, threading into the fabric of who I become.
The posters that I got from Portobello
are staring at me from my left wall,
they do not contain humans,
they carry elements of thought.
I did not pierce them into the wall,
this house belongs to my landlord,
just as everything, I remain borrowed.
One of the posters fell,
I didn’t put it back up.
From all those years of forcing myself to stand upright,
I do not have the power for an inanimate object,
just as with life.
From here on, I will go backwards, not forward.
All those cuts that left their scars
are just like that poster,
they left a blank spot.
The future is not for hope
but for it to remain without cuts.
Yet living in tomorrow
has always brought costs.
I still carry the mark
of that burning coal,
it settled on my throat.
The memory of it, I do not recall.
I did not feel the pain.
My mind left it in the screams
I shouted
for my mother to come home.
No one is coming.
I know that now.
I do not need it.
I only need more blank spots
on the wall.
Panic surged three times last week,
as I remained breathless, hands shaking,
eyes too tired to drift to the ceiling
to shove my tears back inside.
Bits and pieces, cuts arrived.
I didn’t lose myself overnight.
Cuts kept hitting the same spot,
my wound widened, deepened,
too close to my heart.
It didn’t shed a skin,
it stopped pumping blood.
I remained dead
in waking life.
It cut my feet
off the ground.
I started using artificial ones.
They are not mine,
they belong to L-dopa.
I walked backwards,
now I am facing fear.
not for the day my walking disappears,
but so my sister
does not have a bad time
while she is here.
That spot on the wall
is a part of my life.
For the creation of the girl
I shall meet tomorrow,
I won’t protect her.
There will be cuts,
but I let go of what has already been done.
Thanks for reading, if my words spoke to you, let them travel.
