Roses under the Skin

Placing the blade of the knife across my soft palm, I drag the metal along the skin: the tissue parts like peeling freshly-glued papers apart, and then a second later, venetian red roses bloom, swell, overflow. My eyes avert towards the mirror in the hallway and I stride towards it, palm held upwards as the blood dribbles down my wrist.

Staring at myself, I watch my pupils dilate in the new light. My hand is darker in its reflection, now clotting like gritty wine. The skin around my eyes does not wince in defiance against the assault; they cushion inside the dips of cheekbones, asleep. Nothing registers the wound, mending itself peacefully.

Angled under the kitchen windowsill, the serration of the knife highlights the slither of blood straggled in its roughness: an accomplice to the unheard torment.

Beginning to shrivel back into the startled skin, I pinch together the incision with the fingers on my other hand, producing more delicate flowers to expand in mahogany shades. The skin around it is not subtle but worn, as if swiped with sandpaper and left out in the sun. How deceitful the body can be.

I have never taken a knife towards my self: I could not envisage the appeal. Even now, there is no surge in the capillaries, or a twitch under the scalp. The wall under the mirror exhibits a thin stain of what hours ago seeped out of the hand now cupped on my knee: the only affirmation of the act, after the knife cradled into the washing machine rack. An absence of muscle memory, of squinting pain, sharp words firing out of the throat. Now, where could they have got to?

A response to imagining 'a world without pain'.