Skin Graffiti

I like to cut
my flesh with razors,
watch the blood drip,
bang my arm until it hurts
more than I can stand.

  To the girl who scribbled this message
 on the bathroom wall of the King’s Head Pub, Vancouver

You can also use the sharp slant
of scissors, nail clippers,
broken shards of glass found
in a church parking lot. 

It’s your skin, after all.
It holds all of you together,
a once-in-a-lifetime real leather bag.
Bones and blood and dreams, discoveries
of who in this world you are, peppermint tea,
burnt crusts of red meat, the last
memories of your lover, his rush
in and out of your veins, the birdseed
you let fly in the yard the day
you decided to start collecting
feathers. It keeps all of this warm
in the flow from your neck
to shinbones, ribs to scars, the scratches
of your scarlet signature. 

Use your grandmother’s knitting needles
if they are steel and sharp, her crochet hooks.
Hell, you could even use the split edge of this table.
Slide your inner arm against the jagged grain,
watch the splinters scrape you raw. 

You’d be almost
divine, maybe
even easier
to love.