Her eyes brimmed with tears of sadness

As her hands shook with tremors of anger

A headache of loss of control slammed in her skull

Humiliation pushed up the back of her throat

Her father slept in the other room

Her mother cooked and cleaned in the kitchen

She heard her sister laughing in the backyard

And her uncle watching TV in the den

And she alone sat in her room on the bed

In her hand she held a stainless steel cure

Light from the moon poured from the window

Illuminating the grooves tears had dug in her face

The laughter of the innocent outside

The laughter of the fake in the other room

The laughter of those she hated in her head;

The only ones she couldn’t drown out

The tip of the blade danced over her skin

Once again shame pushed against her throat

But it was paired with a rush of painful anticipation

One that wasn’t sure she liked this time around

Darkness in her soul and darkness in her room

She let the black take her completely in

And the world melted away, leaving an empty void

All her senses left her, alone in a hollow shell

And all at once it came rushing back to her

She found herself aware of the world once again

With a fresh set of scarlet tattoos on her wrists

That she had no recollection of getting

And for the first time she realized she was crying

The first time she had in so many years

But yet nothing felt any better, nothing was okay

And so she let her sorrow flow without an end