Skin-written

I cannot control my skin, so I etch on it for temporary relief. Scratch out the feverish, black-bloodied letters onto the milky white. I should get out more, or else fade into so much greying and decaying and gone, finely dusted.

The nib bumps over the dry, flaky surface. Don’t scratch, don’t itch, don’t retch, don’t crash. Scritch and flitch. Clatch and platch. It’s all so much noise now, so much meaningless flinging against the wall to see what sticks. Duck down fast, crouch low and hide behind your turned cheeks. Face the wall, because here comes another torrent of verbal abuse. You’re right, I don’t have an earthly. Not a fucking earthly.

Scribble and scrape and scrawl and scratch. Again, again and more again. It’s too compulsive to resist. No, I said. Don’t scratch. When I am done, you’ll be soothed. I promise you that. I never lie about my lines of flowing ink, except perhaps when I resort to desperately gabbling and screeching in flagrant capitals like a thing, a thing possessed.

I know what happens next, because I’ve navigated this selfsame route a thousand times before, in rolling storms and thunderous outbreaks, whilst the moon above quietly appeals for calm and the restoration of tranquil order. I know these distant shores like the back of my hand. The beacon you raise to guide me looks so welcoming, so reassuring. Keep burning, don’t fail me now. There’s the promise of harbour, mooring and rest, drifting nowhere on lullaby ripples. All that and more lies only a few hours journey from this well-marked shipping lane.

Soon, very soon, I will smear myself in antiseptic grease to calm the irritation which seethes inside my entire nervous framework, yearning to break forth in unsightly blemishes. Not yet, though. Not yet. Just one more curve, one more stem, one more letter.

This pen is fast running dry, just as I am. It ran dry and ran aground, broken on the rocks; a beached vessel taking on water, yet parched for liquid sustenance and gasping for the merest drop of moisture with every breath of its iron lungs. Trust me, if I press here and here and there and there, as if this hand and wrist and fist clenched tight were a newly ripped sheet of blissful white and feint, I’m sure that I will locate a friendly lifeline. If I write on this empty page, it might prove something. I’m not sure what, since I am not thinking at all rationally.

Can you feel my fingers? Can you feel me grasping? Are you holding? Hold, hold and thrice hold. Grip on for dear life. All you’ll feel is a momentary stinging, then the faintest drop of that black blood seeping, seeping, seeping and solidifying. There there, that didn’t hurt a bit, did it?