Do you hear what I hear?

I've never used a microscope for her skin before.
I simply believed her, that months ago rehab had
claimed her time and every breath she could force
to squeeze in. There was no chardonnay or
romanticism about it- no Monster drinks, no bottles
of bleach, no hair pulling, or purposeful burns.
I don't think she even owned a scalpel.
I still don't know if the one time her blood sought
a way out if what she used was a kitchen knife
or a pocket knife....like it really matters.

It stained the floor.
Months later she kindly scolded me,
it wasn't a suicide attempt.

She talked of the feeling. I never understood it.
Then again, I was never pro- anything to do with self-harm
or needles or sharp pointy things like lead that breaks
dangerously off of a new mechanical pencil.

That was until my addiction changed the reason
I knew I had for my life.
And for those weeks I consumed it endlessly,
and for those hours I grit my teeth together
so I wouldn't rush toward it,
I knew I needed some abuse.

And the most gratifying would be physical.
Nausea threatened to surface but my heart demanded
it's imprisonment.

I grazed my skin with a knife set my family had bought.
Once, and I felt my sins were atoned.
Twice, more courage pounded through me.
It finally took a year-and-a-half until I could pierce
the first touch of skin, have red spot my arms, and
trace the lines that weren't curvy or straight.

They just where there, a part of me. A part of me
from the future, possibly.

Last time? Last time there were no more jagged
cutting knives and tiny kitchen utensils.
There was wood. There was blade.

I remember she had called this particular knife the
razor's caress.
I cringed inside- feeling the stomach flu that I hadn't had
since fifth grade.
My insides have yet to stop twisting!
But I did it- don't you see?

I am just the hypocrite I caught in her words,
words I gave, trusted upon. Words that lied.

She is me. I am her. We? We are one.

Because if you try to focus only on listening
for cries...
if you sneak in her bedroom while she's at school
to search for stains (of blood or tears or both)...
you'll never know her.
You'll never understand.

She gets everyone with this full smile,
a disposition and realistic attitude almost everyone
knows will get her far no matter what the world turns into.

A smile that passes through everyone's eyes.
And those who matter the most to her fail to hear
the silence she has vowed to.

* \\ December 20, 2012 at 12:40 am.
* written in shoes of someone going through this. I knew a friend who in the past had had this experience and often told me about it- how she was over it and that was the dark part of her life......then kept hiding new scars years later.