Let me start again, here,
where a woman ends.
The wrists were involved.
Also the leg-tops, the delicate skin
of the inner arms,
anywhere she could drag a sharpness
that factors in and out
what she could not change in her life
which was pain.
The steel ratio of pain
to power
being control.
VII
Now ask yourself, as I did,
why hurt yourself more?
Postscript.
Sometimes she would cut herself, then go next door
to the neighbor's house --
a drywall finisher out of work
because this was the recession --
and present her arms to him
shyly, like a girl
in her first prom gown of ruched sateen,
awkward in bows
but with terribly alert eyes.
Ask the girl with the dirt in her mouth.
Ask the girl who is all poem
now, all shapes between the shapes
she carved into her flesh
like a tattoo artist falling in love.
with what remains un-inked, the border crossings
and blue edges
and the razor bleeding
in her hand.
