The Artist

Trigger Warning: Self-harm

I look at my skin and all I see is a blank canvas, waiting to be filled. I see my skin and all I want to do is take a blade and carve unto it all my burdens and my shortcomings. I see my skin and all I want to do is paint the canvas with my blood as I, the artist, drown in it. I want to see the cuts the blade leaves and I want the cuts to burn when they touch my clothes. I want to know they exist, that the canvas is not blank, that I have carved unto myself everything that I was worth. I want to cut till there is no blood left to bleed. I want to cut till the blood grows flowers and I want to cut till the flowers wilt. I want the blood to flow till there is no end to it. I want it to pool around your feet so that you are forced to splash in it. I want to cut and cut till there is no water left to wash away my blood, and I want to cut till the water becomes my blood and you are forced to splash it in your face. I want my scars to stay, to never heal, to remind me that my body is a canvas and that only I, and no one else, gets to use a blade. I want to peel off my skin so that blood comes rushing out. I want to know what it feels like to have no blood rushing in your ears and no heartbeat beating inside your mouth. I want to listen to my thoughts as they see the blood pour away. I want to scare them like they scare me, like their end isn’t just near, it is today. I want to cut till there’s nothing left to cut anymore and I want to reconstruct myself again so I can cut myself just a bit more. I want the scars to never leave my body. I want them to sting when I wake up twenty years later. I want them to sting while I pour over them my own salty tears. I want the blood to pour out of me so no blood is left to pour anymore. I want the world to behold the canvas that is me and the artist I within behold.