11 December 2003
Lessons unlearned

Lessons unlearned

Disappear here
Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama

A gasp of gin and the blade of a knife. Glassy fibres like cracking ice. I don’t want to hurt any more – not the six tiny scratches that unite, river-like, in a sticky red sea, but the pressing melancholy that never ends.

***

All this stuff. It’s just stuff; gold thread and coral, rose leaves and love. All useless, disposable stuff. I hope he threw it away. I hope it burned. I don’t want him to have any part of me.

(The copies, of course, endure. A glotoun, obsessive preserver of words.)

***

Wounds on my temples, bruises down my thighs. A cut on my hand, and two days later, beneath chipped pink nails, there’s a fine black line where the blood has run.

Scarlet marks, sweet red wine, a deep-throated rose. A bloodied chutney I can’t get out of my mind. Stigmata palms, the symbol of lessons unlearned.

Dusty * Fresh

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But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose leaves

The way I feel today - 10 July 2004

Just seventeen - 17 March 2004

Roads to freedom - 25 February 2004

Confessions of a failed self-harmer - 25 February 2004

Manchester, united - 25 February 2004