The Poem on My Arms

Destroy me

Drag empty nail beds

Down the dreamless white

Of my arms

Bleed me out

Unthinkable red

Like raspberry wine

On your lover's lips

Calling you

With eyeshadow secrets

Secrets I never learned

All whispered

In a language I do not speak

It pulls me down

To suffocate me

With my own inadequacies

My roadmap veins

Pale blue travelers

Beneath translucent skin

Wonder how close they are

To the surface

I trace them with my finger

Like a pen over paper

Sketch a picture of my own life

Wondering about the lifeblood underneath

When the picture isn't good enough

When my handwriting's not as pretty

As everyone else's

I throw away the pen

Try to erase the imperfect lines that I created

And I leave the pen

With all my words trapped inside it

Because when I write those words on my arms

To cover those pale blue veins

I'm ugly

If I press the pen too hard

If I tear the fragile paper

What comes through the rift in the broken sky

Little birds freed from open cages

Or the raspberry wine

As red as your lover's lips

I'm drowning now

In the sea of my inadequacies

The pen is all that's left

To save my life

So I'll take the pen

And write the words

Sketch the picture

Cover my pale blue veins

With my life story

Even if it's ugly

Even if my handwriting isn't beautiful

Even if it's inadequate

Even if it makes me worse

Because it's the only thing

That I have left

And if by chance

I tear the fragile paper

I hope its the little birds

Freed from their open cages

That come rushing through

The broken sky

And not the unthinkable red

Of the raspberry wine

On your lover's lips