“Health and Safety”

There have been plenty of times when I had to fight for my life.

Sometimes it was for my “health and safety”,

sometimes for happiness.

I fought for what I could not bear to lose,

but I lost all the same. I can still recall the taste of all

those defeats, as bitter as unripe plums.

I remember the time that I thought I would die of thirst.

I wasn’t even sure what dying meant, but I was so, so thirsty.

I remember the blood that ran down my wrist,

like the blood that runs down the wrist

of a girl who has cut herself with a razor blade

and stares at her own reflection in the mirror.

Perhaps that is why I am as I am:

I have seen my death; I have seen it, and it was nothing.