Remembering: The Start of Self-Harm

moss
before noon

Remembering:  The Start of

Self-Harm

                It is the one he chooses,

                yellow, plump, a little bruised

                on one side from falling.

                That place he takes first.

                                                The Groundfall Pear

                                                Jane Hirshfield

To seal it, I brushed some of my daughter’s black polish,

from the nailbed to the tear, to prevent getting caught

on anything.  Anything at all.  Because what requires

fastening and the frequency of fastening is distracting

to the small injuries: the thumbs mostly and lately: (I

shut my right one in the car door last March and it’s still

coming through) a certain split on another over and over,

but only so, it’s subtle and I bother it when I need

a small pain.  Who doesn’t sometimes?  When I was

small I discovered it was more grounding than gravity,

to draw blood up from under my living skin, to mark it

now and forever and be made again and again while

it healed while the scab hardened and sat firm, a man-hole

cover of sorts, the rushing by of blood just below, on

its way to or from the heart, but slowing down when

the road got narrow, right there at the wrist.  I felt it give

a nod on the way by, the way any good penitent would

when he or she passes the gallows say, now grown over

with honeysuckle or morning glory, the gibbet only just

visible from the road, the brass commemorative plaque gone

chaotic green.  Lacking polish, it is more important now,

wouldn’t you say, than the day it was tacked, and the con-

veining days and the silence, the power of the sky

bearing down on my small hand, the sharp tip of the glass

(once it was sand.  Sand!  It was soft enough to walk on

at night in the dark) poised just there, just there, small

injury.  Because they start that way and make it, brave,

through healing and decay, through blooming through

fruit, though not before, and this has to be considered,

the he-bee drone: the proboscis touch to me after he cut me

and drank me and had his way…and I have his mark to this

moment, and I touch it when I need to, a compass when

I’m derailed, when those gallows are cleaned with a frenzy

by the community, and the rope’s hung, it’s tested and hung.

And a spider, a very small one, knits her web in the noose.  I’m ok

today, truly.  I’ve come through, thank you.  It’s enough, black

polish.  On a thumb.  On a nail cut short to avoid randomly getting  

caught.  Thumb that blood was drawn from.  That was pressed

into the cheek, the soft meat of a tender beast, opening

me to close me, the nailbed silent as the king-

sized bed upstairs, blood a pestle: morning glory, honey

suckle.