I’m driving in the snow when I realize
I don’t know how to be inside my body anymore.
Even when it hurts, I just lay there and look
at myself from above, sprawled out on the bed
like a bruised and whimpering whore.
I’m bleeding from my skull
because I keep picking at a scab
I created myself
so I would have something to pick at
when the cigarettes don’t work,
when you don’t call,
when the knives come slicing up my ankles again.
This is a daily occurrence.
Before this pain there was other pain
but it was a different shade.
Before this pain I knew
how to fuck the pain away, how to
get wet with a man and like it
when he talked about my cunt
dripping into his mouth.
Now I don’t like anything.
Or maybe I do.
I don’t know.
There’s a difference between heartbreak
and abuse, though people keep comparing them
as if they are the same, as if someone’s rejection of you
is the same as someone’s destruction of you,
as if a broken heart
is the same as this mangled creature
at the foot of the bed, giving birth to orgasms
that fall dead between my legs like stillborns.
by Sarah Xerta
