my skin isn’t paper
but that doesn’t stop me
from carving the weight of the
world into my wrists
crimson blood tiger stripes.
or from ripping apart the pages of a story
i never asked to be in
don’t judge a book by its cover-up
that is, pant legs and long sleeves.
and betting on depression
is like gambling with slits instead of slots
the butterflies in my stomach
are wingless wasps.
but sometimes, scars do fade
and one day when I picked up
a paintbrush
my story came back to me
one letter at a time.
and I saw my skin was flecked with gold
instead of blood
the punctured veins on my hands
became sapphire cracks
ochre and acrylics filled my broken lungs
instead of black tar and mothballs
and now
when I say my skin
is a canvas
i mean to say
not that I bleed in vivid color
but that I have paint
running through my veins,
and you may often find me
sketching ink roses on my wrists
and walking tightropes of
guitar strings and poetry.
“THE HEALER”by Treforlutions TreVizionz is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Samantha Rose
Samantha Rose resides in Portland, OR. She loves using poetry as a form of social commentary, and such writing is often inspired by her degree in sociology and philosophy. She enjoys art of all forms and her work has been featured or is forthcoming by Nightingale & Sparrow, Mohave He[art] Review, Down in the Dirt, Quail Bell, and more. You can often find her painting with coffee when she's not drinking it with her nose in a book.
