I can’t fall asleep in this class
Because the ink might smudge off on my face.
My teacher wakes me up just in time with an easy question:
“Where does the comma go in this sentence?”
And I raise my hand
Because if I answer this
She will leave me alone for the rest of class.
But I forget the ink on my palm.
“Taylor, what is that?”
She yells before I can hide.
But I’m paying more attention to the blinding stares
Of the girl that sits next to me with the flawless skin
And the boy across the room who probably thinks
I’m too weird to even look at when I accidentally bump into him at lunch.
“You’ll get ink poisoning, wash that off!”
It’s okay
I keep another sharpie in my pocket.
But my pen is almost out of ink.
I look down at my hand,
And I find it.
I look at my wrists,
And I find it.
I look all the way to my fingertips and there are the remnants,
The materialized feelings that are too strong
To be kept inside a felt tip container.
There they are scribbled out on my vulnerable skin.
It used to be a therapy,
Now it’s an obsession.
I’ve been asked why I ruin my fragile flesh
With such damaging words.
I write
Because I don’t know how to find the sounds,
How to articulate what I want to express.
There is so much that I want to tell you,
Though I know you won’t listen.
But the minute I write it down
You somehow seem interested,
Like what could be so important that she is writing on her wrist
Instead of filling in the notes.
Sometimes I write because I want you to see.
I know exactly who will grab my arm and start reading
And sometimes I write for them.
So that they can finally hear me.
Every word written meticulously,
An ellipses between some letters to define the moments when I don’t know what to say.
But sometimes I want the words to be hidden.
Sometimes I write all the way up my thighs
So that my jeans will cover my cries for help
And my socks will conceal my shouting ankles,
That the tops of my feet will be silenced.
But I will write to you the only way I know how.
And I will be careful not to let my tears smudge any single word.
One day
I was walking through the hallway
With a song tattooed up the extent of my forearm.
I wore short sleeves that day,
Probably a mistake.
I didn’t know who she was
But out of nowhere, she had my arm in her tight grasp.
Like the only way she could read was if she cut off circulation to my hand.
I stood there trying to explain that
No, I’m not a freak.
No, I did not actually write that song.
No, I don’t want my arm suffocated between your cold bony fingers.
“You know, you’ll get ink poisoning like that.”
She shot these words at me
Before turning away.
I heard somewhere that you have to ingest a significant amount of ink
To actually become poisoned.
I don’t swallow the ink.
I write to release my feelings,
I don’t want these words inside of me anymore.
I write to get them out.
So that my soul isn’t black any longer but my skin is.
But if somehow the letters do find their way to the corners of my lips
I will drink it with all the passion I have written them with,
Ounce by fatal ounce.
A lethal therapy;

A toxic love story.
If black venom does replace the oxygen
That keeps my blood pumping,
I will continue writing the only way I know how.
Bury me with a pen in my hand.
Ashes to ashes, 

Ink to ink.