self-inflicted

i fooled myself into feeling nothing because i'd convinced myself it didn't exist.

i plunged the knife into my chest, ramming it forcefully through skin, cleaving muscle until its tip landed heavily against my breastbone. with a white-knuckled grip, i dragged the blade down towards my abdomen. the severed fabric of my t-shirt fell in divided fibers into the furrow left in the wake of the knife's jagged journey down my torso. i curved the blade's path, cutting upward and around, my left breast falling away from my body to land in a flacid mass on the floor as the trail of disconnected flesh ended where it began. i looked down and saw a gaping mouth exposing the contents of my chest cavity, my skin flapping around it like toothless gums. i was painted with plasma, the thick liquid gurgling in muted sounds as it spilled from the wound, soaking my clothing and staining my skin. my mind became a disjointed observer, indifferently witnessing the self surgery as if i had suffered little more than a broken fingernail.

where is the pain? the agony from a wound such as this should be seizing every cell within me, twisting my insides until i fall into an unconscious knot on the floor.

i glanced down with detached vision at the traitorous thing still moving within the open wound, watching as it expanded and contracted in a cadence of defiance against me. i refused to give that thing a name because to name it is to claim it and i didn't want it anymore.

it still pumped platelets of his essence through me, a coagulation of images clogging my vain attempt to rid myself of him

still beat in observance of his existence, a metronome stuck upon the rhythm of his name

still bore life born still in his absence, a painful labor of dead seconds from the withered womb of inert minutes

i reached into myself and ripped the thing from me, slamming it against the carpet. i was so sure it would lose its life in the wake of its disconnection from my body, so sure i would win my demise in the wake of its defection from my body. i mean, essentially, it hadn't belonged to me since i'd met him anyway. the winding vines of my veins had become a map tracking his invasion of my terrain from the moment my brain licked upon the vibration of his voice.

i willed it to stop beating.

stop beating.

stop BEATING.

STOP BEATING DAMNIT.

it wasn't even listening to me. it just layed there on the fucking floor, expanding and contracting, telling me it didn't need to be within me to be in this with me.

i don't die that easily...

i watch that thing crawl across the floor, etching a path of blood in the carpet as it painstakenly put one valve in front of the other and inched its way over my shoe, up my left leg, past my waist and abdomen until finally it fell into the hole created to rid myself of it, reattaching itself to me as though it had never left.

don't get that shit twisted, heffa. you cut HIM out of your life, not ME.

she made me reclaim her, made me name her and acknowledge the anguish that once in a while comes with her existence.

my heart.

my vulnerable, selfish, sensitive, stubborn, romantic, determined, compassionate, loving, resilient, hell-raising heart.

i'll never get that shit twisted again (uh, until the next time my overly dramatic emotions convince me otherwise)

but one thing's fa sho... even if every now and then she pulsates in the cadence of his name, the pain of the remembered refrain won't ever be enough to make me think of ending either one of us again.