I hit my head pretty hard
I feel it as a pulse
Radiating pain in sync with my heart murmur
Sporadic and unpredictable
Twitching on beat with the marching band
At every soft spot
The nook of my neck
Where you’d laid at rest
The bust of my chest
You’d tease and caress
The scars on my wrists
Where you’d place your sweet lips
Mending each inch back to one
My sliced open veins now long for your touch.
I’m an old rag doll.
Like legends say
It’s spirit manifests itself in me
I was young
I didn’t know
I wasn’t born human.
We aren’t ever born human.
Before I was taught how to love
I stripped her
Delicately picking each hair from its root
Careful not to leave a single strand.
I dug my nails deep into her back
For weeks on end
I nagged and nagged and finally tore her
Stuffing her hollow flimsy skin
With cotton balls from my mother’s bathroom mirror
Sewn back together as one.
I’m as thin and fragile as my hollow doll
Slunching my head to my palms
The spikes of my spine protrude poison
The doctors have given me every exam possible
Transfusing my blood with brass
And like the skin under the ring you left me
My insides rot, green and moist
Vicariously admiring the virgin sun
Dry and pure
Like the long blonde locks that fall
Just beneath my shoulders
Knotted and twisted
In as many ways as hair can go.
But like my doll
I pick apart my scalp
Collecting blood beneath my nails
For safekeeping
To prove my humanity
Self-deprecating disaster
I change with the seasons
Letting life control me
It wasn’t the pulse I felt
But the twitch of my dying heart
Resisting its end