In My Skin

I awake in the morning

I turn my head, cheek scraping against the pillow

And I can feel it

Knives in my skin that cannot pierce it

But that does not stop the pain that grips my heart

The bleeding wound in my soul that I must heal each day

First I feel it, and after a millisecond that feels like years, I hear it

A scraping against the fabric of the pillowcase

A quiet, imperceptible cacophany that echoes in my mind

The deafening sound of a million memories of a million mornings

And the daily warning of a million mornings yet to come

The sound lingers

But it does not drown out my thoughts

It is not merciful

It is not merciful, because it is nothing

And yet it is everything

I sit up, lest I hear the scraping again

And as sit in morning darkness

The sound in my mind rots and turns to dread

Because I know what I will do

And that it will hurt

And that I will do it anyway

I reach for my face

I touch my hand to my cheek

Hoping against hope, that the scraping was a trick of memory

A sound from a dream lodged in my mind

It isn't of course

And so I feel the knives twofold

And wish for nothing more than that I could drive them in further,

Replace this pain with another

I leave my bed and walk to the bathroom

The jouney doesn't exist, for as soon as I decide to go

I'm there a million times before

And so I wait

For the present to catch up to the past

That I might start what I've finished

As the wheel of my days spins on

The click of the light switch returns me to myself

But only for a moment

And I turn to the mirror

To look at my selves

This morning is every morning

Every morning since a little girl turned ten

And found that first hair on her chin

I see a million faces I've had

A perfect continuity of faces that aren't mine

That were never mine

That I refused and refuse

In that mirror I see triumph too

A woman smiling in genuine joy for the first time, and many times since

But this is the morning

And the morning brings dark eyes and pain

In the morning I am not a woman smiling in joy

I am young man from years ago, smiling in hate

Cutting at his neck to watch it bleed

I am a little girl, scared and confused

Who will forget everything she is,

And learn to hate the morning

I wet a face that isn't mine and grab a razor

The scrape of the razor echoes as the scrape of the pillow did

But the razor brings another kind of pain as well

The sting of cutting

And the blessedly blinding sight of red

That brings relief

But the same thought it always does

That I could cut and cut until there is nothing left

Flense myself on the altar of painlessness

Nothing to feel

Nothing to hear

Nothing to see in my skin

But the thought is useless

A remnant of a dead impulse

And so the scraping continues

And the echo gets louder

And my thoughts grow darker

Even while the sound dims

Quieter and quieter

Until it is gone

And my face is my own

For now

But even the face that is my own carries a mark

A reminder of my morning ritual

A shadow of dread

In my skin