Today
I’m remaining in my head and not relapsing. Tomorrow
I might come out and write a poem.
Eleven years ago
I perched on my windowsill and talked to the Catholic god
about the horrors an eternity of damning fire
does to your skin. Two summers later
I got a bad sunburn and the skin on my back
was like an impregnated frog’s.
I picked away at the skin on my arms
with a shard of yellow plastic.
The scab was bloody and mossy.
The scar looked like a reindeer.

Today I’m remaining
in my head and not relapsing. Tomorrow
I might stand on the moss and talk to the Catholics
about finding poetry where I should have found God,
about my impregnation,
about the blood on my arms,
about the skin in my throat that is scarred like a frog’s
after years of inhaling shards of burning plastic.
I have endured the eternal damnation
of the hallucinated reindeers of my childhood closet
mocking me for my yellow scabs.

Today I am
remaining in my head and not relapsing.
I have never written a confessional poem before.
I never told anyone about the suicide attempt,
nor the eating disorder, nor the skin
I fashioned into bloody moss
to endure my own god damn eternal fire.
Two summers later I
will not love this town anymore than I do now and
I might burn all the poems I’ve ever written.

03/02/2009

Author's Note: This is a response to Jason Bredle's "Pain Fantasy," and the second in a series of ars poeticas.

Posted on 03/31/2009
Copyright © 2010 Stephanie Lane Sutton