It begins with edges, dry and jagged like teeth. I feel them catch on things, hooks. It's the edges that get my fingers trembling; they snag on the grooves of my fingerprints. I bite my lip.
I try to grasp the flaps between my fingernail and thumb. I work them and them with my primitive apparatus, I can't stop myself. A red crescent rises on the pad of my thumb, etched and tender. The little bits of skin are small. I keep at it. I'm no quitter.
They lift, finally the edges, and I pull. I realize that I am holding my breath.
I do it slow and painful. They come away, these pieces of myself, in narrow curled strips of skin. Beneath I am pink, clean; honesty is the pink hidden uderneath the dead surface of myself. And the pink grows deeper the more I pull myself away from my self. I am good underneath.
It's satisfying. Minute tears of blood seep up to the new skin like treasure. It's satisfying, the throb of my heartbeat there, to feel something. The piece of skin is long. I am reminded of Mama when she peeled apples for us, one long twist of red.
Speaking of Mama, this began with her, her and the hole in my head. It was a tiny, shallow hole near my ear. She liked to squeeze it. "I need to get out the dirt," she'd tell me and I put my head in her lap so she could work. I would watch her in the mirror, pinching her face. Creamy tendrils of built up oil and dirt coiling out from between her fingertips. She could do this for hours. Or the slow and meticulous plucking of her eyebrows.
Me, too now.
There is release in ridding my body of impurity. To tear that skin off is orgasmic. And later, when walking against that raw altar, I think of my sin and the atonement for that sin so that I may not sin again.
I need the physical reminder. My heart and mind are too busy to remember.
(copyright 2007) c. A. Hughes
05.19.07
I try to grasp the flaps between my fingernail and thumb. I work them and them with my primitive apparatus, I can't stop myself. A red crescent rises on the pad of my thumb, etched and tender. The little bits of skin are small. I keep at it. I'm no quitter.
They lift, finally the edges, and I pull. I realize that I am holding my breath.
I do it slow and painful. They come away, these pieces of myself, in narrow curled strips of skin. Beneath I am pink, clean; honesty is the pink hidden uderneath the dead surface of myself. And the pink grows deeper the more I pull myself away from my self. I am good underneath.
It's satisfying. Minute tears of blood seep up to the new skin like treasure. It's satisfying, the throb of my heartbeat there, to feel something. The piece of skin is long. I am reminded of Mama when she peeled apples for us, one long twist of red.
Speaking of Mama, this began with her, her and the hole in my head. It was a tiny, shallow hole near my ear. She liked to squeeze it. "I need to get out the dirt," she'd tell me and I put my head in her lap so she could work. I would watch her in the mirror, pinching her face. Creamy tendrils of built up oil and dirt coiling out from between her fingertips. She could do this for hours. Or the slow and meticulous plucking of her eyebrows.
Me, too now.
There is release in ridding my body of impurity. To tear that skin off is orgasmic. And later, when walking against that raw altar, I think of my sin and the atonement for that sin so that I may not sin again.
I need the physical reminder. My heart and mind are too busy to remember.
(copyright 2007) c. A. Hughes
05.19.07
