Blood

Dripping, flowing down from the arms

Every scar a new place to flow from

Line by line by line

Perfectly straight

But not parallel

Some intersecting

Some not far from right angles

Scattered and chaotic

Irregular yet as if a ruler was used

Freshman year art college enforces expertise with a precision knife

The practice can transfer easy to a scalpel

The wounds themselves are hidden

Covered

Obscured from blood

Each and every drop

The smell of copper fills the room

As it falls on the tile, it distorts the perfect sphere

Popping back into form

It slowly falls down the slope of the tile

Then flowing into the grout, disrupting its surface tension

It breaks apart, some being absorbed

Eventually, those canals start overflowing

The drips pass between them, some flowing over the tile

Its pattern is hypnotizing

The way the surface tension changes

The way it flows

The ink blot pattern it forms around the arm

Its hypnotizing

Or it might be the blood loss

Oxygen to the brain fading out

Passing out

Unresponsive

Vision fading

Sound growing distant

 

 

Someone opens the door

They plead

Hey, hey hey hey, its okay

Youre gonna be okay

They’re frantically holding towels to the arms

Come on, stay with me

Youre gonna be okay

The arms grow red too fast

Overfilling

Dripping down

I’m right here

Please just stay with me

The blood drips down, slowly, slower, slower

Vision fading

Gray tunnel

Stay with me

I care about you

Vision fading

Hearing fading

Please

Please stay with me

Hear nothing

See nothing

Feel nothing

See nothing

Smell nothing

See nothing

Be nothing.

 

 

 

 

I wake up, shaking, lying in bed

Our breathing is rapid

Drenched in a cold sweat

What the fuck was that?!

We frantically look at our arms

Not even a scratch

Just old scars

With similar yet different stories

Never that one

Our body holds the trauma

But our brain needs to give a story

It has stories to choose from already

But it wanted something different

One where someone helped us

One where we could feel safer in the storm

But it wasn’t real

But it felt so real

It couldn’t be real

It never happened

Then why do I feel it all?

Why does it feel so real?

We curl up in a ball on our bed

Shamefully, we grab our first aid kit

It feels wrong to use bandages on uninjured skin

But we have to teach ourselves it’s okay on traumatized skin

We leave the gauze but take the gauze roll

We loop it round and round

Soft and fluffy

We take the self stick bandage

We wrap it around and around and around

Comforting deep pressure, feeling like it’s stopping the bleeding

The blood that isn’t there…