TW: This poem features mentions of torture methods by name used to depict the physical effects of mental health problems. This poem is not sexual and the mention of triggering material is only used in comparison, but it might be graphic in case you do search up some of the stuff. Please read at your own discretion.
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Self-Crucify
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There is a kind of pain within me, one which refuses to leave. Like thunder, it beats in chronic sync with my heart, amplifying with each breath i draw. My chest feels burdened, iron spider over breast. My stomach feels tight, pull at the rack, this pain is clenching on to my gut from the inside, tugging at my nerves, threatening each neuron to be uprooted in turmoil.
My body feels the tremors quaking through my hands, down my ankles, extending into my feet and shooting up my shin, fettered and bruised. It punctures my shoulders, lingering in the tendons of my shy back, scavenger's daughter, climbing up my choking neck, heretic's fork. I can't breathe. It throbs across my temple, seizured electrocution, then rings in my eardrum in deafening shrills, trigger pull under ear. The vibrating sensation flows in and slides up my nasal path in fluid thickness, then leaves my face deprived of sensation, water torture. My teeth grit shut, cemented walls grinding. The wincing whimpers echo through my vessel. My tongue tries to stop this gruesome war, witch's bridle.
I have no control over my body. I am but a witness to this dire tragedy. My eyes water, and my face feels warm despite the shivers jolting through my body. I try to blanket myself with my numb bare hands, trying to conquer the cold. Streams run down my skeletal cheeks, lost tear catcher. The piercing sting behind my irises intensifies. It hurts; I want to scream, but what comes out of my mouth is silence as I wail in mute self-pity.
There is a kind of pain in me, one which refuses to leave.
image: Vincent Van Gogh, Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette, Van Gogh Museum, 1885-86.
