self-harm in literature

[lifeinpoetry]

I can see now that everything I (we) did (do), everything I (we) said (say) was (is) a spilling of the beans, a constant begging to either be helped or put out of my (our) misery. The powers that be felt they had no choice left and the door was removed from the hinges of my teenage bedroom. Oh, to be punished for finding and using unconventional ways to survive! Cutting on my arms and stomach with an X-Acto made perfect sense to me and I still stand by it as what I needed to do at that time, but I wonder, where does the cutter’s idea come from?

— Meg Remy, from Begin by Telling (via lifeinpoetry)

[lifeinpoetry]

Behind the back sink of the fourth floor girls’ can. Rosa kept the razor in a patchwork pencil case. The metal handle’s cold weight, solemn unscrewing

of the blade. We took turns, raised arms, etched tiny Xs in the baby flesh of triceps, wadded paper over blood. A spell against …

[…]

Xs faded to rumour, faint ink in diaries, on divorce papers, restraining orders. The lighter the mark, the deeper the cut, and no one’s blood to console us.

— Nancy Lee, from “Covenant, Junior High,” What Hurts Going Down

[lifeinpoetry]

I opened the window, knelt on the fire escape. I was the prey & hawk. This was finally myself swallowing those small, common parts of me. Tearing all of that away into strips, my breast open to the bone. I saw myself torn apart, tearing & tearing at the beautiful face, the throat beneath my claw. My grieving face red with being exactly what I knew myself to be.

— Rachel Eliza Griffiths, from “Hunger,” Seeing the Body

[lifeinpoetry]

Truth? God is a cutter.

She parades slash marks around Paradise and plays with asps in her spare time; call her Cleopatra with a mortal complex.

— from Chorus, eds. Saul Williams, Dufflyn Lammers & Aja Monet

[lifeinpoetry]

Pleasure is crying, starved. Tonight’s supper is burning (again). Psyche opens the oven door, places her bare hands on the Calphalon pan spilling over with ambrosia (again), tells the family it’s time to eat. They gather round her. Cupid doesn’t notice her blistering scalds, or know she revels in being scorched awake, in the moments before giving thanks for their darkened portion of forever.

There are limits to what even Love can know.

— Airea D. Matthews, from “Psyche on Prozac,” Simulacra

[lifeinpoetry]

Having an affair // is just getting all dressed up to cut yourself.

— Phoebe Stuckes, from “Gold Hoop Earrings,” Platinum Blonde (via lifeinpoetry)

[lifeinpoetry]

Cut the lonely from your rib cage. Cut the shit. Let the juice of the black   blue veins drip from the old house you once called your body. And in that house, you will leave the lights on, let them burn for all passersby to witness the hallelujah of your glory.

—  Jessica Helen Lopez, from “Obsidian Knife to Cut the Shit Out,” The Blood Poems

[lifeinpoetry]

I’m wilting in this heat like blossom. I’m turning the corner to another accident and emergency. I could hurt myself but I probably won’t.

— Phoebe Stuckes, from “Monologue,” Platinum Blonde

[lifeinpoetry]

Pangea

Always breaking up/just broke up with someone/ broken up about it/in pieces/heart-broken/who did it I’ll kick their teeth in/yes I am/broken/ heart-aching/cutting myself/trying to pick it up/ yes I am too much/foolish/cleaning broken glass up/wrong/broke a window trying to get into the house I used to live in/now/I have/nowhere/to go

— Phoebe Stuckes, from Platinum Blonde

[lifeinpoetry]

My friend wakes up at noon. Goes to bed at eight. Wants less time because she wants less pain.

I understand. I’ve been there too. I can spot a scar beneath a wristwatch from a hundred yards away.

And no, it is not the weak who try to clock out early. It’s people who are desperate to go home.

— Andrea Gibson, from “Time Piece,” You Better Be Lightning

[lifeinpoetry]

go figure even after leaving i’ve a taste for self-flagellating draping the scabbing gashes in gauze and gawking at that mythical

— Dylan Krieger, from “old enough to fake control,” Soft-Focus Slaughterhouse

[lifeinpoetry]

beaches (13)

lemon juice in your cuticle cuts is not punishment for anything it is serendipity it is one star crossing another in a flat sky essentially it is god

lemon juice lifts almost any dish roll it on the worktop be thankful squeeze

speaking as a person with almost no experience pain can be a gift

— Rebecca Perry, from Stone Fruit

[lifeinpoetry]

Fat Girl Abecedarian

                                                                   All my life I’ve hated my body. Even thin, I hated my body enough to                                                                     carve into the skin of it, dance the blade over it                                                                                             every day for a year, cover the scars, which                       grew soft and faint, pencil lines drawn on paper, hardly noticeable after                                                     I pressed a tissue against them, just enough peroxide to clot them, the                                  kitchen scissors placed back in the drawer lying sideways with       my body remembered there, crisscrosses gleaming clean next to the forks, the spoons                                          on top of the butter knives, too dull to push against me, too         quiet to make my face flinch with the slice of it, no tears raining down with it. How do I make                                                                  sense of it when I never told anyone till now? Now my fat body             understands how to punish itself in private, scars less visible now than                                                                when I made them then, x-ray stills of raised light bouncing off my forearms,                           yellow turned to white. And still I trace the fat zigzags across me, searching for signs of my body.

— Stephanie Rogers, from Fat Girl Forms

[selfharminlit]

oh nevermind, your main is lifeinpoetry? i got confused hahaha

Yes! It's @lifeinpoetry

[selfharminlit]

thank you so much for this blog. hope youre doing well. take care.

Thank you, it's been a while. <3 I'm doing okay (my standard answer no matter what's going on). I'm about 1 year cutting-free (and two years before the slip) though I still regularly self-harm in lesser ways. & about 12-13 years since my last suicide attempt. Life is weird that way. Not easy but less franticly focused on self-immolation??

I need to queue more self-harm excerpts up from my main.

[lifeinpoetry]

It’s nice to be able to hurt myself & not have to take the blame. Yesterday, I burned my ring finger into a bloody mess. It’s been burning for a studded companion for years. Or at least I think it has.

— L. Lamar Wilson, from “What Did You Do to Yourself?: Finding Fault,” Sacrilegion

[lifeinpoetry]

Another year on the day of class photos I scratched at my face with a sharpened popsicle stick no blood just a few pink lines that didn’t read           What else I wanted a cast on my leg or anywhere I wanted braces and glasses and my tonsils out I wanted scars           I don’t know when or whether I figured out the difference between wanting to be damaged and wanting to be healed

— Mark Bibbins, from 13th Balloon