Cuts Poem by Adesola Jegede

I was eleven when I first placed a razor against my skin
and I can't remember why
Not that first time
I could give you all these reasons
Good reasons
People are bad
Home was sad
Life was hard
Yeah life was hard, but that wasn't why
A cop out, plain and simple
My escape
I just wanted a little more time
to breathe and do nothing
But I hadn't hit my quota of pain
I hadn't sweated blood yet
I'd had a couple tears,
but no blood
So I cut

and I bled
And I sat in my hurt as you all passed by
and clapped
and hailed
What a hard hard worker I am
working til hands peel and souls shriveled up
But it was just a cut
Skin deep
And you didn't notice!
So I kept cutting

Little lines of white and lies
That told stories of how much I didn't do
To get you on my side
And even when you found out that I was a lie
that I wasn't really that strong
or brave
That I'd been sneaking my way in
while making funny pain faces
I still couldn't stop
Not for long anyway

I know you said that this is life
We are expected to toil
It is supposed to hurt
For long
That all it's supposed to do is hurt
But I can't keep up
I can't run on blisters or draw with broken fingers
So I cut
And let up think I crawled all the way up