Absentminded. Thoughtfully tracing the roughened edges of skin that meet the open wound. Slight flinch, unexpected twinge of pain. Look down; see the swimming sea of red that flows easily over the pale flesh.

Smile with satisfaction. It hurts. It feels vengeful, vindictive... With cold fingers, pull the raw edges of the slash back together, droplets of blood fall from the bottom like tears. Tears of the wasted, the worthless, the poor, the invisible. You can't possibly spill enough blood or tears to pay for the sins you've committed.

Of all ways to deal with emotional stress and pain, why would someone choose to inflict harm upon themselves?

Because there is no alternative. There is no other way to deal with it. Things like counseling and asking for help do not exist, they will never help. There is only one thing you can do to try and feel better about your emotional pain, and that's to give it an outlet. Let it express itself through the gaping injury to your left wrist. Allow it to scream out in anguish, because you cannot. Your wrist will recieve the attention that you never got as a child, as a teenager, and now as a college student.

You have convinced yourself that taking the pocketknife's blade to your wrist makes you feel better. Equips you to move on. Allows you to forgive and forget. All in all, you are a better person because of the innumerable scars adorning your arm.

Some days are so grey they just beg for some color. Nothing has happened. Nothing is going to happen. The sky is heavy and laden with moisture. The sun cannot penetrate the wool blanket that smothers the world; everything is black and white. Everything ... except your canvas. Your canvas can be laced with crimson, splattered with cadmium, striped like a prisoner's clothes but in a beautiful hue of vibrantly buzzing RED.

People wince when they glance at the hamburger-like skin that now veils the thin veins and tendons and ligaments that course through your arm. The close ones, your friends, will ask "Why? Why'd you do that?"

And my question to you, friend, is "Why haven't you?"

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